25+ years building software and leading the teams that build it. Most recently CTO at Dovetail, now founder of Savanto, an applied-AI engineering firm.

Experience

  1. Founder

    May 2025 – present

    Savanto

    • Applied-AI engineering firm: answer systems, forecasting and generation, and AI features shipped inside existing products, run in the client's environment.
    • Built the flagship, Savanto Desk, end to end: multi-tenant AWS platform with hybrid semantic search (OpenSearch), LLM chat pipelines, autonomous crawler, WordPress plugin (wordpress.org).
    • Remote MCP server (mcp.savanto.ai) with one-click OAuth 2.1, listed in the official MCP registry.
  2. Technology Advisor & Consultant | Applied AI, Fractional CTO

    2006 – present

    Independent

    • Applied AI and engineering leadership for clients from startups to the enterprise, including a fractional CTO tenure at Dovetail.
    • LLM feature development (RAG, semantic search, agents, MCP), cloud architecture (AWS/GCP), and engineering leadership.
    • Clients over the years: CoinList, Eataly, ExxonMobil, COTA Healthcare, Argonne National Laboratory, University of Miami, RW3, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and others.
  3. Chief Technology Officer

    Mar 2023 – May 2025

    Dovetail

    • Led product and engineering for a platform modernizing e-commerce for retailers of all sizes.
    • Architected an enterprise React/TypeScript framework with an advanced design system and extensible plugin architecture.
    • ~95% client retention through hands-on sales engineering.
  4. Head of Engineering · Director of Software Engineering

    Jun 2019 – May 2025

    Pocket Made

    • Directed teams for clients including Procter & Gamble and Marriott.
    • 45% improvement in engineering KPIs through process overhauls; 30% lift in talent retention across DevOps, data science, and development.
  5. Principal Engineer (Consultant)

    2016 – 2018

    ExxonMobil

    • Led the InSite SPA initiative for personnel tracking in high-risk regions; modernized a legacy front end with Vue.js under strict compliance requirements.
  6. Lead Engineer (Consultant)

    2014 – 2016

    COTA Healthcare

    • Built an oncology data platform from inception (Node.js, NoSQL, AWS, Angular); engineering team grew from 5 to 75+ during my tenure.
  7. Senior Software Engineer

    2011 – 2017

    CBTS

    • Enterprise delivery across web platforms; led multi-language SDK creation and the SOAP-to-REST API transition for Global Payments.

Education

  • The University of Texas at Austin, Red McCombs School of Business

    2004 – 2006

    MBA, Information Management & Entrepreneurship

  • University of Dayton

    1995 – 2000

    B.S. Computer Engineering