Davis W. Frank
I am an experienced senior software engineering leader with a demonstrated history of helping software teams shorten feedback loops, ship software, and stay happy. I can manage developers, designers, product managers, and people managers. I can build and re-staff teams. I can own critical business systems and start open source projects. I can present to meetups, conferences, customers, and executives about Ruby, JavaScript, YAML, Web Applications, early history of PC game development, low-level processor optimization, Pair Programming, and Test-driven Development.
Professional Experience Timeline
Fountain 2021 October - 2023 May
Director of Engineering
- Improved release frequency from 3 times per month to 4 times per week.
- Rebuilt, centralized, and standardized engineer hiring process.
- Managed 2-3 various teams of 20-25 engineers and managers across assessment cycles, re-orgs, and layoffs.
- Teams included Product Development teams, Data Engineering, Release Engineering, and Cloud Engineering.
- Managed cost and contracts with Cloud Service vendors (e.g., AWS, Azure, Heroku, CircleCI, GCP/Looker, and others).
- Stacks & Skills: Ruby on Rails, Javascript/Typescript, React, Kubernetes, Heroku, AWS, Azure, GCP, Looker; Facilitation, Management of managers, Cost management, Remote team management, Staff & Software strategy.
Personal Sabbatical & Product Advising 2020 January - 2021 October
- Collaborated on the software engineering simulation at Curious Duck.
- Advised Bigger Bolder Baking on vendor selection for improving their CMS.
- Rebuilt my personal website and blogged on software engineering topics.
- Stacks & Skills: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Wordpress; Negotiation, Estimation, Client management.
Pivotal Software & Pivotal Labs 2008 April - 2020 January
Senior Engineering Manager, PKS 2018 October - 2020 January
PKS (now known as TKGI) is a jointly-developed Kubernetes distribution from Pivotal & VMware that is a service for Pivotal Cloud Foundry/Tanzu Application Service. Pivotal was acquired by VMware in late 2019.
- Reported to VP of Engineering as part of leadership team.
- Restaffed team of 10-12 developers from Ireland to the US.
- Continued to lead summer intern round table.
- Managed team through acquisition uncertainty.
- Defined and prioritized CI/CD work for the Release Engineering team of 10 developers.
- Doubled the number of concurrent releases from 2 to 4.
- Reduced cycle time from 4 days to less than 1.
- Stacks & Skills: Ruby, Kubernetes, Concourse, AWS, GCP, Azure, vSphere; Facilitation, Interviewing, People Management, Peer organization interactions.
Senior Engineering Manager, Cloud Foundry 2018 April - 2018 October
Pivotal was the primary sponsor of the Cloud Foundry project, a multi-cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for deployment of web apps and services. Pivotal sold its own version of CF, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, now known as Tanzu Application Service.
- Developer on Open Source CF Cloud API team.
- Managed 4 engineers on other teams.
- Facilitated weekly working sessions to improve managers’ skills across the San Francisco office.
- Rebuilt the summer intern experience, starting a weekly “intern round table,” with Pivotal leaders.
- Stacks & Skills: Ruby on Rails, Sinatra; Facilitation, Manager skills training.
Director of Engineering, Internal Application Development 2015 March - 2018 March
I advocated for and created this team within IT to improve the development & maintenance of our business-critical, internal software projects.
- Staffed team to 15 engineers, product managers, and designers in San Francisco and Toronto.
- Drove budgeting and prioritization exercises with executive staff and other organization leaders.
- Key projects: Employee Feedback app, Staff Allocations app + integrations with back office, reporting infrastructure for sales reporting, Discovery for SAP-to-Workday transition, Discovery for Customer Support tooling.
- Stacks & Skills: Ruby on Rails, Javascript, React, Java, Kotlin, Spring, Cloud Foundry, SalesForce, Zendesk; Facilitation, internal client management, people management, remote team collaboration, Executive management, Managing external management consultants.
Associate Director, Pivotal Labs 2013 February - 2015 March
Pivotal Labs was a consultancy that build web and mobile applications with clients as a way of teaching XP skills. Pivotal Labs was acquired by EMC in 2012, then spun out as part of Pivotal Software in 2013. They operate now as VMware Tanzu Labs.
- Managed staff of 40 developers and 5 managers, about one-third of the the San Francisco consulting practice.
- Facilitated client scopings and wrote proposals as part of pre-sales motion.
- Managed 3-4 active concurrent client projects, including staff adjustments and extensions, keeping clients happy.
- Scheduled “beach” time for 8 Pivotal Labs open source projects across multiple offices.
- Presented at conferences, meetups, and clients about Pivotal, Extreme Programming, and testing JavaScript.
- Stacks & Skills: Ruby on Rails, Javascript; Facilitation, RFP response and proposal writing; Presentations to audiences of all sizes, Client management, people management.
Engineering Manager, Pivotal Labs 2010 February - 2013 February
- Founding member of Pivotal Labs’ first manager cohort as we grew to 70+ staff in the San Francisco office; established and modeled initial management practices.
- Managed 8-10 IC developers across consulting projects.
- Continued to lead engagements as engineering “anchor” for client projects.
- Presented at conferences, meetups, and clients about Pivotal, Extreme Programming, and testing JavaScript.
- Stacks & Skills: Ruby on Rails, Javascript; Pair-programming, TDD/BDD, Facilitation, people management.
Software Engineer, Pivotal Labs 2008 April - 2010 February
- Lead engagements as engineering “anchor” for numerous client projects.
- Taught client developers Ruby on Rails and XP practices.
- Co-authored Jasmine, a BDD framework for JavaScript testing.
- Stacks & Skills: Ruby on Rails, Javascript, Palm webOS; Pair-programming, TDD/BDD.
Senior Software Engineer
RGM was building a custom CMS in Ruby on Rails, intended to back a family of web-only magazines. They were acquired in 2009.
- Lead engineer on the development team of 6-8 for Divine Caroline, a women’s interest magazine.
- Worked with internal Product Management on feature feasibility and estimation.
- Improved CI run from 2 hours to under 45 minutes over 6 weeks.
- Stacks & Skills: Ruby on Rails, Javascript; Pair-programming, TDD/BDD.
Personal Sabbatical 2006 June - 2007 February
- Taught myself Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and SQL
Handspring & Palm 2001 November - 2006 June
Handspring was acquired by PalmSource and renamed to palmOne in 2003. They renamed again to Palm in 2004.
- Engineering Manager, Device Customization and In-box CD-ROM teams
- Reduced end-of-line smartphone final programming from hours to 3 minutes.
- Designed & managed implementation of new XML-based carrier customization system.
- Moved In-box shared MacOS/Windows CD installer to daily builds.
- Managed staff of 8 engineers.
- Engineering Program Manager, Messaging & Photos
- Led prioritization and implementation for Messaging & Photos apps for Treo 600 and Treo 650 smartphones
- Managed external vendors for MMS, Imaging, and Photo driver libraries for necessary enhancements.
- Reduced “click-to-1st-photo” time from 3.5 seconds to under 1 second
- Engineering Manager, Tools
- Managed team of 5 developers who developed PalmOS SDK for all of Handspring software devices.
- Completed implementation of Mozilla/Bugzilla-based web app & migrated Development from custom bug database.
- Stacks & Skills: PalmOS, C, InstallShield (cross-platform), Perl, XML; People management, vendor management.
Prior Experience
My history of roles and accomplishments at Netstudio, Brøderbund, and Intel are available in my full resume.
Education
B.S., Computer Science, July 1992
General Management class and electives, since fall 2017
Projects & Activities
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