The Continuous Deliverist

Resume June 2015

Profile

I build great engineering teams, and they build great products. Throughout my career, I’ve been lucky enough to work with and lead brilliant individuals on some of the most interesting and successful products in enterprise software-as-a-service. I drive thought leadership on Continuous Delivery, agile development best practice, and lean start-up methodology. Whether it’s hacking a quick python script or rolling out a multi-million dollar project, I’m happiest when technology, processes and people are all focused on creating an amazing customer experience.

Experience

Senior Director of Product Development – Workfront

As a member of the executive product steering committee, I work to ensure an alignment between the business strategy, product roadmap and architectural plan for the Workfront product. For the first time, we have global alignment of objectives and their key results (OKRs) to help connect the day to day efforts of each team to our shared purpose. We’ve reorganized into a cross functional team model (The Spotify Model) that has more than doubled engineering throughput. All of this has occurred as we’ve hit new highs in customer satisfaction and quality.

• Key Accomplishments
• Global alignment of Workfront engineering offices with common objectives, metrics and milestones.
• Led transition to a collaborative cross-functional organizational structure
• Doubled engineering throughput while keeping headcount level
• Hired directors in key locations to help the Workfront technology group scale

Director of Engineering – AtTask inc. 

During my time as a leader of Engineering, I grew and improved in all aspects of the software development business. I played a leading role establishing offices in Armenia and Minneapolis, keeping turnover low and morale high. I developed and introduced a new hybrid approach to Agile development, that reduced the defect rate by 80%, and increased team productivity by 30%. This hybrid method was recently the subject of a highly successful GigaOM Webinar. I’ve achieved this by keeping laser focused on building a rewarding engineering culture, building out powerful cloud-based continuous integration tech and working collaboratively with other leaders up and down the organization.

Key Accomplishments:

• Doubled engineering organization with < 5% turnover
• Developed and launched flagship product, driving customer growth from 1% Y0Y to 42%YoY
• Reduced defect rate by 80% Y0Y
• Established community of practice around Javascript development, including the largest AngularJS User Group in Utah (10th nationally)
• Worked directly with executive staff on product strategy and roadmap
• Panelist and speaker with Software Quality Engineering, GigaOM Research, and others

Development Manager – AtTask Inc

As a Development Manager, I helped ramp a newly hired VP of Engineering, as AtTask transitioned from a smaller development organization to a more mature group. During this time, I led a team of engineers in a matrixed organization, helping them develop their skill sets to become some of the top performers and future leaders of the group. I directly oversaw the development of the largest release of AtTask software to that point, involving the work of Scrum teams in the U.S. and overseas, over a period of several months. I conducted performance reviews, hired new engineers and scaled our QA organization.

Key Accomplishments:

• Led all major product releases
• Established multi-team Agile practices
• Hired and ramped four new development teams
• Initiated and delivered Continuous Integration and Delivery pipeline

Software Engineer – AtTask Inc

I began my career at AtTask as one of a few engineers in a small start-up. I transitioned relatively quickly from Actionscript to Javascript, becoming the first engineer on the team to certify with both Adobe and Sun in these respective languages. I served as Scrum Master on several agile teams during this time, and mentored newly hired engineers as we grew.

Key Accomplishments

• Led several engineering teams on key projects
• Dual trained and certified in Java and Actionscript development
• Championed and led architectural transition from integer based primary keys to UUIDs

Designer – Ninjabee

My role at Ninjabee was to design levels, write dialog, and suggest creative direction for a series of independent games published on XBox Live and Nintendo Wii. I worked as a member of an agile team, and used my strengths in organization and communication to help complete their projects on time and under budget.

Skills

Organizational

Leadership structure, incentive programs, development methodologies

Technical

Java, Actionscript, Obj-C, Python, Javascript, LESS, MooTools, Spring, Hibernate, Eclipselink, MySql, more…

Speaking

I am a recognized thought leader in Agile best practice, specializing on the intersection of Agile and DevOps in engineering groups. Recent engagements include talks on Continuous Delivery at Selenium Conference 2012 in London, the Scrum Gathering Atlanta, Agile Roots Utah, and the American University of Armenia.

On the Web

I blog at www.continuousdeliverist.com, and tweet about software at @dowdlemj

Education

Brigham Young University – BA History, BA Broadcast Journalism

Referrals

“This is the best kind of LinkedIn recommendation, it is an unsolicited and spontaneous recommendation.

I have had the honor and privilege of working alongside Jesse for the last year while at AtTask. He has been an incredible ally to have in the development team, and has made the job of protecting production much easier due to his desire to improve the continuous integration testing process we have adopted at AtTask. This one thing has dramatically cut down the error and defect production leakage rate.

Not only is Jesse a gifted developer and leader, he has insight into business that is beyond his years and is able to clearly articulate his vision of the future with all levels of management and employee.

Jesse has made in onto my list of people that I trust and admire within the IT space. I intend to keep a close eye on him as his trajectory is nothing short of ballistic and he is destined to achieve greatness in his career.” May 1, 2012

Q Wade Billings, Senior Manager, SaaS Hosting Operations, AtTask, Inc.