About me

Hello! My name is Tim. I'm an engineering and product leader with over 25 years of experience in tech. I'm also a seasoned full stack engineer with a speciality in Ruby on Rails and web applications. I love creating simple software, nurturing teams, and helping engineers and managers improve their craft and grow.

I've led large product-focused teams at Binti and Shopify, infrastructure and reliability teams at Google and General Assembly, and founded a public health tech team at Resolve to Save Lives. I've built for startups and operated my own agency. My roles have spanned all stages of great products, from design to engineering to operations. My strength is helping these work great together.

My career story

I'm currently on sabbatical, taking a career break to restore my creative energy and enjoy quality time with my family and myself.

Most recently, I was VP of Engineering at Binti, a mid-sized startup working to improve child welfare. I served on the executive team, guided product strategy, and led engineering for tools to assist families and agencies aiming to help every child have a loving family. Prior to that I was a Senior Engineering Manager at Shopify, leading the shipping team. We made it easy for millions of merchants to fulfill orders and buy shipping labels from carriers around the world.

The work I'm most proud of is cofounding Simple.org, a open source app used to support large scale hypertension programs. In 2018, my friend Daniel Burka and I joined forces to build a tech team at Resolve to Save Lives, a non-profit led by former CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden. Our work continues to treat over 4 million patients across India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Ethiopia.

I also ran my own agency for 7 years, designing and building for startups, car dealers, national print shops, and many companies in between. It's where I learned to understand the whole business, that what's important isn't code, it's adding value.

I was a Site Reliability Engineer in the early days of Google SRE, leading teams running the systems underlying every product, including GFS and Borg (which eventually inspired Kubernetes). I also worked on Google's cloud infrastructure, coordinating the logistics behind building and upgrading over a million servers to meet future capacity needs.

At AOL, I worked my way up from intern to full time engineer, writing code to support the world's largest ISP and web proxy, running early internet radio (with the Winamp team!), and monitoring the first live streamed Super Bowl commercials.

See my résumé for more about what I’ve accomplished.

How can I help?

I'm an extrovert who values sinking my teeth into a product and helping my team become the best versions of themselves. I enjoy being a part of organizations with a positive outlook, solid foundations, and appreciation for their workers.

Throughout my career, I’ve had many people guide and help me reach my potential. I’m passionate about giving back. I love coaching and mentorship, helping folks look into a mirror and like what they see. (Thanks Kelsey Hightower for that line!) I also enjoy writing, speaking at conferences, and trading knowledge and perspective with folks new to the industry.

For years I offered weekly mentorship with Out of Office Hours. I also volunteered on the Friends Council for the my local library, helping fundraise and spread awareness for services it provides. Service is a core value in everything I do.

Read more about what I value in a job as well as how to work with me.

What matters to me

My family is the foundation of my joy. My wife Faye is the love of my life and we're lucky to get to raise two amazing kids. Every day I learn something from them. Being a parent, like being a leader, is all about giving people space to make mistakes and being there to lift them back up.

I’m passionate about music and food. I play piano, drums, and I’ve been a DJ since I was in high school. I love traveling the world and meeting its people and cuisine. I'm a sneakerhead and also have a solid whiskey collection — my favorite is the one I get to share with friends. If you want, I will happily talk basketball or watch a game together.

Thanks for reading! I really look forward to finding ways to work together.

Thank you to @fayecheadle, @dburka, @amychiou, @staserz, @harimohanraj89, @sartin_shannon, @bigfleet, and everyone else I lean on to be a better person every day.

♥️