Keith Harshaw is a Senior Director Software Engineering Frontline Education - SaaS EdTech at Frontline Education. He possess expertise in team building, product development, management, strategic planning, leadership and 26 more skills. Colleagues describe him as "I know first-hand that Keith is a gold-standard CTO and master of BOTH product SDLC and services/custom/Line-of-business project SDLC. Keith is the rare professional who over a recent career can demonstrate building financial systems for Governments, massive government portal CMS platforms, building web commerce systems for start-ups, and - of course - architecting and building life-or-death 911 Emergency Management Operations/Dispatch and mobile public safety software platforms. Never the simple stuff!
Keith has built IP for "crazy" visionaries, start-ups. enterprise clients, and even government teams at state, local, and municipal levels. Keith is a first-tier strategist and system architect for line of business, mobile and web technologies. Keith assembles and directly manage amazing delivery teams and both inspires and empowers them to achieve.
Keith is one of so few professionals in the industry who can, for a client or employer, blend the disciplines of consulting services, start-up product development, enterprise product development, R&D management, hands-on architecture design, enterprise availability/scalability, and also human resource management. If not enough, Keith is brilliant doing technical sales to customers.
For a client or employer to get the most benefit from working with Keith, the problems to solve need to be difficult and challenging yet important and impactful. Keith will work just as well with visionaries as he does with teams in regulated or formal process-driven enterprise environments. Keith has direct personal delivery experience (at the enterprise level) so he is informed and speaks from grizzled experience succeeding and failing with projects in his career. This is why Keith is brilliant as an architect and CTO and team leader for Application and Product development to help clients define scope, architect a solution/approach, write code, contract/hire teams, QA, launch and optimize, and manage support.
Besides his depth in the Public Safety industry, Keith has built his career building and managing teams (plus himself coding, testing, and QAing) who delivered over 100 enterprise line of eGov Web portals for CT.Gov, DC.GOV, Commonwealth of PA, and delivered web apps, web services and entire custom solutions for companies such as Armstrong World Industries 100+ of Regional enterprises and many start-ups.
Most importantly, Keith is an absolute gentleman and a consummate business professional and executive. No matter the stress of launch, debugging a critical system live, dealing with payroll or hiring or firing a staff member (and even just how he is outside of work) Keith is always calm, always thoughtful, respectfully reserved yet clearly decisive and absolutely brilliant. Keith is a true tech partner and first-class CTO to a founder/executive and leadership team.
I could not more highly recommend Keith to a future co-founder, client, employer or peer.", "Keith was my professional sounding board for years - as my team member and my immediate supervisor. He has the ability to break down complex problems and present them to clients and team members in a way that gives confidence and understanding to all stakeholders involved with the project. Keith's calm demeanor, even in stressful situations, enables his team members and direct reports to stay focused and be successful in delivering quality solutions.
Keith's passion for technology and his ability to manage and communicate with others is a rare combination of skill sets that would benefit any organization.
I would highly recommend Keith as a loyal and dedicated manager/employee.", and "Keith has been a pleasure to work with, both professionally and personally, for the last eight years.
He possesses the character traits that are foundational to success in human relations and commerce.
• He values the truth and is unflinching in his pursuit of it.
• He keeps his commitments.
• He appreciates irony and possesses a great sense of humor.
He is an exceptional leader, which, based on my observation, results from his self-discipline, his keen insight into human behavior and motivation, and his truly remarkable breadth of knowledge—knowledge that ranges from technical minutiae to the philosophical underpinnings of legacy and leading edge technologies.
• He inspires those he works with—and those who work for him—by his work ethic, his team spirit, and his outstanding management acumen.
• He is fair, but still insists on performance. He is trustworthy, and people come to depend on what he says. While he accomplishes much on his own, he’s content to move others to the front of the story.
• He doesn’t shrink from the difficult conversations and readily takes the laboring oar for hiring/onboarding and, when needed, management initiated terminations.
Keith has a quick and agile mind that moves with ease between business and technical issues.
• He is creative and extremely resourceful.
• He expresses himself clearly and concisely, and has the coveted ability to shine a light on issues without making it a personal attack.
• He continually demonstrates intellectual curiosity.
I recommend Keith without reservation for a senior leadership position. He is a rare find."
Listed skills include Team Building, Product Development, Management, Strategic Planning, and 27 others.