Mar 2024 – Present · 2 yrs 2 mos · Remote

• Writing a newsletter that delivers pragmatic, hard-earned advice for professionals at the intersection of software engineering, tech management, leadership, and business.

Dec 2022 – Present · 3 yrs 5 mos · Remote

• I work with CEOs and CTOs of growing SaaS companies to enable their engineering departments to generate more business value. These are some common problems I can help you solve:
• 🤦‍♂️ Our engineering department doubled in size, but productivity hit a brick wall!
• 🤷‍♂️ We’re totally dependent on the agency that developed our MVP!
• 🤑 Engineering is a Cost Centre instead of a Profit Centre!
• 🙏 Engineering Management Guidance Needed
• Hire me as your CTO in a fractional capacity, or to troubleshoot a specific problem.

Oct 2019 – May 2022 · 2 yrs 7 mos · Israel / Ukraine

• ✅ Managed 120 people (~90 engineers and product managers), across multiple sites internationally.
• ✅ Led development of a FinTech B2B2C SaaS asset trading platform and scaled it to handle $180+ billion in annual trading volume.
• ✅ Led deployment and scaling of internally developed Marketing Automation platform (B2B2C SaaS) to successfully handle 9 million monthly unique visitors.
• ✅ Doubled the size of product & engineering department; led organisational transformation through mergers, spinoffs and implementation of Agile methodology. Member of executive management team. VP Engineering and VP Product reported to me.
• ✅ Managed comprehensive re-architecting, rewrite and successful deployment of internally developed B2B2C payments processing solution.

May 2018 – Oct 2019 · 1 yr 5 mos · Israel / Ukraine

• Responsible for engineering department of 40 people.

Sep 2016 – May 2018 · 1 yr 8 mos · Ramat Gan, Israel

• ✔ Set up the company's engineering department and grew it to 13 members, in Israel and Kyiv, Ukraine.
• ✔ Worked with my teams to deliver the company's lottery tickets and betting e-commerce platform, and first B2C product, within 8 months (industry typical: 1 year).
• ✔ Provided technical and managerial oversight (and mentoring where required), and guided architectural decisions.
• ✔ Established standard and consistent processes for recruiting, evaluating employee performance, designing new functionality, managing the software development life-cycle (SDLC), controlling technical debt, deploying code, handling and resolving production issues.
• ✔ Invested heavily in automating every step of the development, testing and deployment pipeline (JIRA, GitHub, Jenkins, Docker, AWS EC2 and ECS) to support CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment).
• ✔ My department successfully passed multiple audits mandated by relevant governmental regulatory and standards bodies, based on the ISO 27001 information security standard. These examined both our internal engineering methodologies, processes and information systems, as well as the security of the deployed product, including undergoing (and surviving) penetration testing. These efforts also contributed greatly to being able to achieve PCI/DSS compliance.
• Jargon for keyword bingo players: Angular 5, Amazon Web Services, Node.js, microservices, using AWS SNS/SQS as an event bus, ELK (Elasticsearch / Logstash / Kibana) for logging and monitoring, Agile.

Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 · 1 yr · Israel · Remote

• Finalist - 4YFN competition at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona 2016
• http://www.snappers.tv

Jan 2007 – Jan 2016 · 9 yrs · Remote

• ✔ Development of web apps (Google Closure Library/Compiler, AngularJS, Bootstrap) including backends (Google AppEngine (Python), Node.js, Firebase, PHP, Heroku, Amazon EC2 & various cloud services) and even Outlook Add-ins (VB).
• ✔ Worked with a long term client on a concept that challenged conventional assumptions, and iterated it until it was mature enough and successful enough to be mainstreamed into production at the client's IT department.
• ✔ Work remotely, coordinating and collaborating with client teams.
• ✔ Experience with analytics and multivariate testing to increase conversions.
• ✔ Experience with spreadsheet & visualization techniques to support data driven decisions, for both engineering decisions and determining business goals.
• ✔ Worked with lawyers / corporate counsel to minimize client risk exposure, ensure compliance with relevant regulations, and to compose EULAs.

Jul 2005 – Aug 2012 · 7 yrs 1 mo · Israel

• Claritude Software's mission is to help busy people overcome email overload and increase their productivity. Our first product is SpeedFiler, a powerful add-in for Microsoft Outlook that makes it extremely easy to file incoming and outgoing email. SpeedFiler's super-fast, find-as-you-type folder selection window makes filing almost effortless, even if you have a deep hierarchy of hundreds of folders. When you send a message, SpeedFiler can prompt you to select a folder in which to file it, so you don't have to dump it in Sent Items. Supports Outlook 2003 and 2007. Ideal for busy people with full inboxes.
• ✔ Identified the problem and corresponding market niche and devised a product (SpeedFiler) with a simple, streamlined UX/UI that masked complexities of the solution.
• ✔ Sold multiple enterprise licences (1000+ seats) and tens of thousands of small business licenses.
• ✔ Developed partnerships with industry-specific enterprise resellers.
• ✔ Set up website; wrote sales and suppport content; integrated with credit card / invoice processing system; used web analytics and multivariate testing to improve conversions.
• ✔ Set up a blog to help market the product by becoming recognized as a thought leader in the relevant space. This led to quotes in other blogs, print magazines, radio shows and even a book!
• ✔ Worked with outsourced contractors to produce various components.

Jan 2003 – Jun 2005 · 2 yrs 5 mos

• Finjan Software (www.finjan.com), since acquired by Trustwave (www.trustwave.com), is a leading provider of proactive secure content management solutions for global enterprises, protecting over 4 million enterprise users from existing and future Internet threats.
• ✔ Member of executive team, reported to CEO
• ✔ Initiated product management function; recruited and nurtured a cohesive team of 3 product managers and 2 technical writers
• ✔ Led migration of product portfolio from software to appliances; developed vision and requirements for an innovative next-generation product line and supervised its successful execution
• ✔ Acted as catalyst for development of revolutionary technology for the new generation product line
• ✔ Overall strategic and tactical responsibility for 9 products
• ✔ Active participant in strategic sales efforts to global corporations (including multiple successful deals of over 100,000 seats/$3M each) and in OEM and technology partner relationships
• ✔ Spokesman for press interviews, webinars, etc.

Mar 2000 – Oct 2002 · 2 yrs 7 mos

• Alchemedia Technologies developed enterprise security products that prevent information theft by trusted insiders - today's costliest information security problem.
• After leaving Alchemedia, I participated in the design review for Microsoft Windows Rights Management platform in Redmond. Microsoft has recently (2005) licensed Alchemedia's technology for use in their security products.
• ✔ Joined as Senior Product Manager; promoted to Director; reported to VP Marketing
• ✔ Initiated product management function at the company; built, trained, managed and mentored a team of 3 product managers and 2 technical writers
• ✔ Overall tactical responsibility for the product line; feature roadmaps, functional specifications, delivery schedules and marshalling products through Engineering and QA; technical white papers
• ✔ Cooperated with partners on integrated products
• ✔ Held pre/post-sale contacts with global corporations; participated in sales/business development activities.

Sep 1996 – Feb 2000 · 3 yrs 5 mos

• Better On-line Solutions (www.bosweb.com, NASDAQ: BOSC) develops Voice-over-IP Telephony solutions and networking products for personal and IBM mid-range computers.
• ✔ Managed an e-commerce development product for IBM platforms, developed in cooperation with IBM.
• ✔ Responsible for technical relationship with IBM; coordinated development with senior IBM staff, including the chief security architect and managers of the HTTP and FTP server products.
• ✔ Defined the functional specifications, designed the system architecture, object model and user interface.
• ✔ Represented company at trade shows; delivered lectures and presentations at distributor and customer conferences.
• ✔ Interviewed and hired prospective team-member candidates.

Jan 1992 – Jan 1996 · 4 yrs

• Bashan was an IT consulting firm, serving the industrial and governmental sectors in Israel. It is now part of Matrix (www.matrix-it.co.il).
• ✔ Managed development activities at a contract site, consisting of three software development teams of up to five members each
• ✔ Analyzed, designed and led development of various systems, including a distributed international financial management and accounting system to oversee an annual budget of over $10 million worldwide
• ✔ Organized training sessions for end-users
• ✔ Formulated software development procedures during the company’s ISO 9000 certification process