Summary
Principal engineer with 15+ years of experience architecting distributed systems and a track record of leading large engineering organizations (100+ engineers across multiple locations). Delivered measurable impact: tripled release cadence, reduced cloud costs by double-digit percentages, and decreased production incidents by 50%. Technical depth in Python, Go, Kubernetes, and AWS with hands-on experience scaling systems from monoliths to microservices.
Skills
- Languages
- Python, Go
- Infrastructure
- Docker, AWS (ECS, EKS, Lambda, Batch, S3), Datadog, Terraform
- Data & Messaging
- PostgreSQL, Redis, RabbitMQ, SQS
- Platforms & Tools
- GitHub Actions, GitLab CI
- Architecture
- Event-driven systems, distributed tracing, SAML 2.0/OIDC SSO, policy-based authorization
- Methodologies
- Scrum, Shape-up
Experience
Orgnostic (acquired by CultureAmp, 2024)
Orgnostic is a people analytics platform providing insights from HRIS, ATS, PTO, PMS and surveying data.
Principal Engineer
- Built self-service customer onboarding platform reducing setup time from days to hours, and created declarative data integration framework that reduced new source integration from weeks to days, directly increasing customer acquisition capacity.
- Designed unified authentication system post-acquisition, enabling SSO across CultureAmp and Orgnostic platforms for seamless user experience.
- Established CI/CD pipeline on GitHub Actions with automated testing and K8S and AWS deployments.
Everseen
Everseen is a computer vision company using neural networks for object detection and classification in retail.
Software Architect
- Designed event-based platform handling 2,000+ events/second with configuration-driven rules engine for on-premise retail installations.
- Delivered neural network training platform by defining MVP scope and establishing testing strategy for internal users.
Seven Bridges
Seven Bridges provides cloud-based platforms for biomedical data management, computing and analytics.
Software Architect
- Led 15-person team delivering novel platform architecture for federal biomedical research tender, achieving highest technical evaluation score among 5 competitors.
Director of Engineering
- Restructured 100+ person engineering organization from 7 to 15 teams organized in 6 departments, resulting in higher job satisfaction rates and ~50% more precise delivery planning.
- Increased talent pool for hiring engineers by leading expansion into a new location.
- Designed and implemented a process for proposing and adopting technical improvements, inspired by the PEP process, that encouraged idea sharing, open discussion and standardization.
- Ensured reproducible builds, consistent unit test executions, and lowered DevOps team maintenance time by implementing GitLab as a git hosting and CI solution. Developed a Go CLI tool that streamlined CI integration with internal services.
Principal Engineer
- Decreased number of production incidents by half within six months by introducing regular critical retrospectives and addressing detected problems.
- Decreased time-to-deploy wait time from up-to-two-months to only hours by detecting bottlenecks and technical problems.
- Prevented hosting cost increase by addressing performance bottlenecks and redesigning critical parts of the system. Led the introduction and standardization of Go stack.
- Proactively designed the Single-Sign-On system (SAML 2.0 and OIDC) based on requirement analysis, reducing custom per-customer development to zero.
Engineering Team Lead
- Grew team capacity by 50% through hiring and cross-functional knowledge sharing, improving response time to internal and external requests.
- Mentored two engineers from IC through Team Lead to Senior Management, defining career paths and development plans.
Software Engineer
- Enabled horizontal scalability of critical system parts by extracting microservices from a monolithic component, including a role-based permission service used system-wide.
- Improved developer productivity and system stability by designing an internal Python framework for writing microservices with backward compatibility.
Schneider Electric DMS NS
Advanced Distribution Management System as part of Smart GRID solutions enabling power vendors to monitor, manage, and control electrical networks. The company changed names from DMS Group to Telvent DMS to Schneider Electric DMS NS.
Software Engineer
- Increased reliability and decreased execution time by designing a framework for automated GUI tests with a custom Domain Specific Language.
- Improved automated GUI test reliability by implementing centralized test result gathering, automatic analysis, and reporting to pinpoint fragile tests.
Software Engineer Intern
- Developed a series of Django-based internal web applications for tracking, monitoring, and reporting on CI systems, software releases, service packs, and patches.
Education
Master in Electrical and Computer Engineering
Relevant coursework: Rapid Software Development Methodology, Software System Protection and Recovery, Software Configuration Management, Neural Networks
Bachelor with Honors in Electrical and Computer Engineering
Relevant coursework: Object Programming, Computer Architecture, Net-Centric Computing 1 and 2, Compilers, Software Design, Software Project Management, XML and Web Services
Community & Open Source
Open-sourced several Go projects (e.g. async structured logger, middleware-based HTTP client) and contributed to various open-source projects, all visible on GitHub (https://github.com/delicb). Actively involved in local Linux User Group activities during college.