Koru is a venture studio backed by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan. Koru's model is to launch new businesses from 0 to 1 while leveraging the resources available within the OTPP.I operated as the interim CTO on two specific ventures:1. Contact Center Automation:Acted as the tech advisor on the launch of a new SaaS platform in the Contact Center Automation space. I worked alongside the product team and helped lead the development team through a spin off from their parent company.Helped drive the solution architecture, tech designs, org structure, development process, product roadmapLaunched in January 2022 with some early signs of success.2. Fintech digital lendingInterim CTO for an API first digital lending platform, operating as a subsidiary of a traditional bank.Worked closely with product leadership to drive all the tech decisions needed to stand up a lending company from scratch using modern day technology.Provided the tech leadership in selecting vendor solutions for the back-office, payment gateway, fraud detection, KYC, AML, and credit decisioning.Led the engineering org through the initial build and beyond launch.Quickly identified the need to be SOC 2 compliant, drove the early adoption of some InfoSec best practices, and helped bring in a fractional CISO to lead the initiative.Launched in March 2023 with great early success and lots of momentum

Nix Sensor is an innovative hardware device that measures color. The company had run for 5+ years focused on innovative hardware but in late 2018 decided to get into software.I built the software team from the ground up. This included attracting and hiring talent by selling them on the unique features of the company, location, culture, technology stack, and the impact they will make.I architected the platform to be React Native on the front-end, and a cloud native back-end hosted on AWS.I owned and built the entire back-end of the platform including the AWS setup of EC2, VPC, Auto Scaling, Aurora, S3, Cognito, API Gateway, Lambda, and more. AWS Code Deploy was used for CI/CD of the back-end APIs.The mobile apps were white-labeled. I accomplished this through build scripts that were run on Microsoft App Center which uses Fastlane for React Native builds.I setup and drove the development process which included daily stand ups, two-week sprints, and managing the backlog via Jira.Worked with the CEO on various pitches and developing the software roadmap and various software business models.

Lead the creation of an online platform that matched job opportunities to executive profiles using a matching algorithm that matched on skills, cultural fit, and leadership style.Acquired by Donaldson & James in April 2018. D&J is a leading recruiting and payroll provider in the industrial space.Worked with the leadership team to create the product roadmap, investor pitch decks, and board presentation materials.Hands-on in driving the execution of the product including writing agile stories, managing the backlog, wire-framing, working directly with designers, gathering feedback from end-users, and running the agile process.Built an offshore team of 4 developers in Brazil using my own personal network. This led to a savings of 4:1 compare to hiring locally. QA consisted of 1 local resource.Very hands-on with development, owned the architecture and DevOps tasks, performed code reviews. The technology stack is ReactJS, Ruby on Rails, CircleCI, Capistrano, AWS.In January 2019 I ported the production environment from a managed hosting provider to AWS. I re-architected the platform to leverage Amazon VPC, RDS in a multi-AZ setup, EC2 with Auto Scaling, Puppet Enterprise, Route 53, Elastic Load Balancing, and CloudFront. Vagrant was also used locally.

Lead the creation of a crowdsourcing platform that provided on-demand photography to brands, i.e. Uber for Photography. Acquired by Shutterstock in 2017.The platform enabled the operations team to match incoming projects with the appropriate resources, curate photos, and mange budgets, timelines, and payouts.I ran a small team with limited budget, so I wore many hats:- CTO: Created the platform and the team from the ground up; chose the technology stack, defined the development process, chose the tools, and hired the right people that allowed the company to launch in two months, and put out weekly releases while maintaining an impressively low burn rate. Development team was made up of 4 developers.- Product Management: Lead the development of the product road map that allowed us to scale our operations to dozens of simultaneous projects with very little operational overhead. Worked closely with the operations team to understand their needs and write user stories for the development team. Also created wireframes using Balsamiq to complement the user stories.- Scrum Master: Drove the scrum process by leading daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, and sprint planning.- Developer: Still managed to find time to fix issues, build new features, and write automated tests.The platform was built using AnguarJS, Node.js, and MongoDB. Hosted on EC2. We used Capistrano for deployments, and CodeShip for CI. Unit tests and Integration tests were written in Jasmine.

Stacked set out to launch a boot camp style learning program for experienced developers to help fill the skills gap in the current market. Specifically set out to teach: security, scale, architecture, devops, and leadership skills.Spent a few months meeting with technology leaders in Toronto to create a curriculum that would help get experienced developers some base knowledge.Ultimately did not launch the company. Everyone loved the idea and was excited to participate, but we were not able to determine a monetization model that would work.

I was promoted to Director of Development for Digital Media in July 2012 where I grew the development and QA team from 20 to 40+ spread across Toronto and Montreal. The team was responsible for over 100 websites and 50+ apps behind some leading brands including Sportsnet Citytv, 680News, Macleans, and many others.I was tasked with re-inventing a team that was under-performing and following outdated development processes. The team was no longer seen as innovative and the internal clients were very unhappy.Converted the team to a much more collaborative and innovative culture. The perception of the team and the ability to deliver improved drastically due to the following changes that I rolled-out:- Implemented a matrix-like structure to better support the different lines of business - Spearheaded the change to Agile, starting with development then spread to Operations & PM- Introduced DevOps, process engineering, and continuous delivery- Replaced personnel who were not performing and not team players- Elevated the QA team from being completely alienated to being an integral part of the process- Re-built the interview process to raise the bar for entry and to create a great candidate experienceI quickly gained the reputation for being someone who cares, is easy to work with, and gets things done.Encouraged entrepreneurship and creativity by running our first internal hackathon with 40+ participants and over 20 pitches.Introduced the University of Waterloo co-op program into the organization, bringing in energetic and high quality talent, plus giving team members the opportunity to lead and mentor.

Joined the RDeals team after Brave Commerce was acquired by Rogers Media in March 2012. Lead a development team through the re-implementation of RDeals.ca desktop and mobile sites. The new sites added integration with Rogers Wireless txt and picture messaging, on-bill payments, and authentication as well as a long list of new functionality and better mobile browser support.

Technical co-founder of a startup that was backed by Mantella Venture Partners. Developed a mobile commerce platform with emphasis on wireless carrier billing integration.Acquired by Rogers Media in March 2012.Built a platform that had direct integration with the Rogers Wireless back-end for Text Messaging, Picture Messaging, On-Bill Payments, Device Location Lookup, and Authentication services. Also implemented 2-factor authentication using SMS messaging long before MFA became mainstream.Solely built the technology from the ground up, launching within 3 months from the start of development.The platform was built using Rails 3.1, Java, and MySQL. Hosted on EC2. Capistrano for deployments. RabbitMQ to protect the back-end from traffic spikes.

Self-Employed working for various clients:Cisco- Provided Consulting and Development services for an IPTV platform targeted at large Telcos. Gathered requirements and implemented solutions to customize the core product for the client.- Was later acknowledged by the management team that I should have been brought in at a much more senior roleMiDatabase- Developed several iPad solutions that were used in-venue by a major Canadian brand - The solutions are used to gather information while at an event, store the data locally, and then synchronize with the back-end once WiFi is available.MyThum Interactive- Provided development services and Architecture guidance on the Mobile Marketing platform that I built when I was a full-time employee from 2005 - 2009

Was Responsible for defining a system architecture for a platform that would run internet connected shopping carts, mobile devices, and desktop browsers.Helped drive the creation of a mobile product strategy that helped win an 18-month commitment from one of our major clients.Member of the Evangelist team that was responsible for rolling out organization change, in which I lead the rollout of scrum across the development team.

Director and Architect building pre-smartphone mobile solutions. Acquired by Olson in 2011.Developed a technology platform that drove significant efficiencies in solution delivery. This played a big part in helping us reach 4th in the Deloitte Fast 50 in both 2007, 2008.The platform was used to break new ground in mobile including:- One of the first Mobile Ticket campaigns in North America- One of the largest volume SMS campaigns in Canada (Deal or No Deal)- One of the most popular SMS campaigns in Canada (Canadian Idol)The architecture was based on several microservices written using J2EE (Java, JMS, Hibernate) running on JBoss, Tomcat, and MySQL. jBPM (workflow engine) was used for configuring business logic.Managed a team of 8 developers including mentoring, setting objectives, and performance reviews.

Was promoted to Time & Attendance module lead within the Professional Services group (the group was approximately 300 employees at the time).Performed Project QA audits that included functional and technical reviews, code reviews, and risk assessment.Created development standards and enforced them through automated tools JUnit, Cactus, and PMD.Development was in Java, and JSP

Designed and developed web applications in a Consulting role for various Fortune 500 Companies. Applications were developed using Java, Struts, and JSP running on Websphere and Oracle.Lead the gathering of business requirements from business owners.Created detailed application designs and lead teams of 3-4 developers through the full SDLC.

Developed call centre desktop applications. Software was written in Visual Basic and some C++.Lead a team of 3 developers by providing software designs based on product requirements

Wrote low-level drivers for real-time systems, LCDs, keypads, motors, and solenoids in C and Assembler