September 19, 2024
Leadership isn’t just about keeping up – it’s about driving change. Today, we’re excited to highlight 35 remarkable leaders who are actively shaping the field of engineering and forging its path ahead.
These leaders, from CTOs to VPs, are pioneering innovations in fields like AI, cloud infrastructure, and data analytics. They’re mentors, visionaries, and trailblazers, leading the way for future generations of engineers while breaking down barriers in a traditionally male-dominated field. Keep reading to meet 35 amazing individuals leading the way in engineering:
Jan Acosta
Vice President, Engineering Operations
Q2
Jan is an experienced software development professional with a strong history of engineering leadership in the financial services industry. She currently serves as Vice President, Engineering Operations at Q2, a financial experience company.
Previously, Jan served in various QA and test automation roles at IBM and ACI Worldwide.
Colette Alexander
Director of Engineering
HashiCorp
As Director of Engineering at HashiCorp, a cloud infrastructure company, Colette oversees engineering managers in the company’s internal platform services organization. Together Colette and her team focus on providing reliability, observability and cost optimization for HashiCorp Cloud products.
She has held previous engineering leadership positions at Cognitive and Spotify and served as Chair, Stewardship Working Group, for OpenStack.
🎙️ What does Colette do when the work day ends? Tune into the 5 to 9 podcast with host and Jellyfish CEO Andrew Lau. On this episode, Colette shares more about her journey to becoming a professional cellist. Listen here.
Melissa Anderson
Director Operations, Engineering
Tealium
Melissa is Director Operations, Engineering at Tealium where has worked for more than 12 years. Her tenure crosses multiple roles and departments, beginning as an account manager and moving into customer advocacy then later into operations and engineering roles. Melissa previously worked at jds Solutions.
Maggie Berryman
VP, Global Data Engineering
TriNetX
In her role as VP, Global Data Engineering at TriNetX, a global network of healthcare organizations and life sciences companies, Maggie leads an international team of passionate engineers and data scientists who build software and solutions to bring data to the TriNetX Platform. She provides leadership, strategic vision and implementation strategy to the acquisition, curation, and exploration of data sources for TriNetX.
Previously, Maggie served in various roles at Velos and Columbia University.
Billie Sue Chafins
Chief Technology Officer
TripAdvisor
Billie Sue has more than 20 years of experience as an engineering leader shipping world-class consumer and enterprise software. She has a proven track record for building and maintaining highly effective teams both in her current role as CTO at TripAdvisor and in previous positions at companies including Disney Streaming, Hulu, Microsoft and Level.
Laeticia Chatiron
Head of Agile
ManoMano
Laeticia is Head of Agile at ManoMano, the largest marketplace for products and services in the DIY, gardening and Home Improvement sector in Europe. In her role, she builds, coaches and applies the evolving Agile ManoMano framework to enable a lean, adaptive, value driven and high-performing organization.
Prior to ManoMano, Laeticia spent 16 years at Airbus where she worked on Skywise, the leading open data platform for the aviation industry.
Caitlin Davis
VP, Software Engineering
Invoca
Cailtin is VP, Software Engineering at Invoca, an AI-powered call tracking and conversational analytics company. Prior to Invoca, Cailtin held engineering positions at companies including cielo24 and Ebix. She has nearly twenty years of experience building and leading engineering teams.
Karen Delfau
VP Engineering Programs
Datadog
Karen is VP Engineering Programs at Datadog, a monitoring platform for cloud applications. She has vast experience running mid-size engineering organizations hand-in-hand with senior leadership in the internet industry.
Prior to Datadog, Karen served as Chief of Staff, Financial Platforms at Google.
Joan Freed
Senior Director of Engineering
Aurora Solar
Joan is Senior Director of Engineering at Aurora Solar. She has previously served in engineering leadership positions at companies including Meltwater and Pegasystems.
Joan is passionate about agile development practices and achieving engineering excellence and has helped lead several agile transformations throughout her career – both organizationally and architecturally.
Margaret Gourlay
Engineering Manager
Netflix
Margaret currently works as Engineering Manager for Games Integration Engineering at Netflix. They started their career as a systems administrator, going on to do video game quality assurance, software engineering and DevOps, and ultimately leading teams of engineers. Their 20-year career spans engineering roles at all levels at companies including EA Sports, Splunk, The New York Times, Wirecutter and Blizzard Entertainment. Margaret holds a degree in pure math.
Lisa Grey
VP, Engineering Quality
Patra Corporation
As VP, Engineering Quality at Patra Corporation, Lisa is passionate about quality everywhere. She specializes in process improvement where everyone benefits. Previously, she served in engineering leadership roles at McKesson and Fatigue Science.
Mojgan Haddad
Vice President of Engineering
Dotmatics
Mojgan serves as VP of Engineering at Protein Metrics by Dotmatics, which allows researchers to enhance mass spectrometry data analysis and reporting.
Prior to joining Protein Metrics, Mojgan held leadership positions with Software and Bioinformatics teams at Corin Group, Talis Biomedical, HealthTell, and Monogram Biosciences (a LabCorp company). Mojgan received her Ph.D. in Computer Science and her Master’s in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from Vienna University of Technology in Austria, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at University of California San Francisco (UCSF) in Mathematical and Computational Biology.
She has published extensively in the area of data science and machine learning for personalized medicine, and is also an inventor of multiple patents.
Tanya Johnson
Chief Product Officer
Auror
Tanya is an experienced product leader, accustomed to building and leading multiple product and engineering teams in the SaaS industry. She currently serves as Chief Product Officer at Auror, a retail crime intelligence and loss prevention platform.
Tanya has more than 20 years of diverse experience spanning strategy, product management, design, development and launch of software products across companies including AskNicely and Hapara.
🎙️ What does Tanya do when she’s not leading world-class teams? Tune into the 5 to 9 podcast with Andrew Lau. On this episode, Tanya shares how she finds peace through pastry here.
Alifya Kagalwalla
VP of Engineering
Pryon
Alifya Kagalwalla is VP of Engineering at Pryon, a generative AI company. She previously served as VP of Engineering at Tempus Labs where she led various engineering operations teams focused on cloud infrastructure, test engineering and developer productivity.
Alifya has held engineering leadership roles at Digital Ocean, Groupon and Citrix Systems. She also serves as a Team Lead for WITI (Women in Technology International).
Sarah Knapp
Vice President of Software Development
DHI Group
Sarah is Vice President of Software Development DHI Group, a leading provider of career marketplaces, where she oversees engineering of the Dice platform focused on employer experience in addition to tech team enablement and Business Systems.
She previously held roles at Lumen Technologies and Level 3 Communications.
Melissa Koehler
VP, Global Program Management and Product Development Operations
PagerDuty
At PagerDuty, Melissa and her team drive the delivery of large scale cross functional programs, resource and financial stewardship, and the operational processes and standards for the Product Development organization.
Prior to PagerDuty, Melissa served in leadership roles at WarnerMedia and Turner. Melissa’s extensive career in the Media and Entertainment industry has served up countless opportunities to implement large scale digital technology and cultural transformations.
Niru Krishna
Chief Innovation Officer
INVIDI Technologies
Niru is Chief Innovation Officer at INVIDI Technologies, a television advertising company, where her vision has been instrumental in driving INVIDI’s growth to a best-in-class software organization over the last two decades. In her role, she manages a diverse team across four countries – together this team has significantly increased revenue and decreased time to market.
During her tenure, Niru pioneered the adoption of Agile and DevOps methodologies within INVIDI which helped the company outperform the competition in the face of shifting technologies and market demands.
Melissa Leffler
Chief Technology Officer
When I Work
Melissa serves as CTO at When I Work, an hourly workforce management solution. She has a proven track record of building, motivating, and scaling teams to develop innovative products that consistently exceed customer expectations. She has previously held engineering leadership roles at companies including Drift, Mautic and Carbon Black.
Kristin Marsicano
Vice President of Engineering
CallRail
Kristin is an experienced technical leader, people manager, educator and mentor with 20 years in the software development industry, including co-authoring Android Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide. In 2020 she was an integral part of scaling Big Nerd Ranch’s Engineering team by 34%, including implementing new processes for hiring, maintaining project success and growing managers internally.
In July 2021 Kristin joined CallRail to help support the Engineering organization’s growth and scaling efforts and support their marketing analytics product from the engineering side.
Tacita Morway
Chief Technology Officer
Textio
Tacita is CTO at Textio, a platform that helps companies hire and retain diverse teams by eliminating bias in the most critical moments across the talent lifecycle. She previously served in engineering leadership roles at ActBlue, Salsify, Ditto Labs and WGBH.
🎙️ Who is Tacita when the laptop closes? Tune in to the 5 to 9 podcast with Andrew Lau to find out. On this episode, Tacita shares how painting and drawing helps her slow down after a long day of context switching and problem solving.
Olubunmi ‘Boomie’ Odumade
Senior Director of Engineering
MIG
Olubunmi currently serves as Senior Director of Engineering at MIG where she leads a cross-functional Engineering organization. Throughout her 20-year career, she has collaborated and worked within engineering teams, across departments, and with contracting companies and vendors, all of which has led to developing better products and more inclusive cultures.
Olubunmi’s experience spans regulated industries ranging from healthcare to energy, media companies like The Atlantic and NPR, and large companies including Accenture and Capital One.
Steffne (Stevie) Palmateer
Chief Technology Officer
LeafLink
Stevie is currently CTO at LeafLink, a unified B2B platform for the cannabis industry, where they oversee Engineering and IT departments. Stevie is passionate about creating and influencing inclusive and equitable spaces and the systems around them.
Stevie has spent their career building teams and technology solutions with this approach on Wall Street, through FinTech Innovation, and now by defining Cannabis B2B supply chain and payment solutions.
Madhu Rawat
Senior Vice President of Engineering
Axcient
Madhu is Senior Vice President of Engineering at Axcient, a backup and recovery platform for MSPs, where she is responsible for product development across all Axcient products and verticals. She also oversees site reliability engineering.
With more than 20 years of experience across start-ups, mid-sized, and large companies, Madhu has held engineering roles at companies including BriteCore and DocuSign.
Signe Roesgaard-Gran
Chief Technology Officer
Puzzel
Signe sees technology as a strategic differentiator essential for driving fundamental change and unlocking new business opportunities in the digital era. In her role as CTO at Puzzel, a CX platform, she works to foster an environment where innovation and collaboration thrive.
She has previously served in leadership roles at Admincontrol, Banqsoft, Tieto, Software Innovation and others where she embraced technical and commercial challenges.
Jen Robinson
Chief Technology Officer
System1
Jen Robinson is CTO at System1, a responsive acquisition marketing platform. Over her 20+ year career, she has demonstrated success leading product, engineering, data science, machine learning and IT/GRC teams at companies ranging from early-stage start-up to public enterprise.
In addition to her role as CTO, Jen is an active advisor to the LA tech community as both a Member of the LA CTO Forum and Mentor at Techstars.
Gemma Ros
Chief Technology Officer
The Zebra
Gemma currently serves as CTO at The Zebra, a car and home insurance comparison website. She has deep expertise in the global financial services sectors, delivering hundreds of millions of dollars in shareholder value via technology and business innovation for FinTech and InsurTech companies, as well as bulge bracket investment banks.
Gemma has previously served in leadership roles BHG Financial and Carrier & Technology Solutions.
Megha Sanghvi
Vice President of Software Engineering
Urgently
As the VP of Software Engineering at Urgently, a digital roadside and mobility assistance solution, Megha leads a team of engineers who design, manage, and develop frontend, automation, and backend applications. With more than 12 years of experience in the tech industry, she has successfully delivered 35+ UI applications and set up a professional service group from scratch to handle non-recurring engineering work.
Bridget Schroeder
VP, Engineering Operations
Fetch
As VP, Engineering Operations at Fetch, the number one rewards app, Bridget’s main priority is to block and tackle for her team of software engineers. This includes removing obstacles, providing coaching and career growth opportunities, and carrying the technical vision forward.
A dynamic technical leader with over 20 years experience in the Information Technology space, Bridget is passionate about working smarter, not harder and having fun along the way.
Priti Choksey Shah
Chief Product & Technology Officer
Iodine Software
Priti is CPO and CTO at Iodine Software, a healthcare AI company. She has more than 20 years of experience delivering exemplary achievements that result in revenue growth and market expansion. She has previously served in product and strategy roles at Finvi, Wolters Kluwer Health, Skillsoft and Citrix.
Dawn Graybill Sirras
Chief Technology Officer
Corelation Inc.
Dawn is CTO at Corelation Inc., a core processor for credit unions. She is a proven leader with experience defining the business case, strategic direction and market requirements of products and service. Through her career, she has become adept at information analytics and operational design serving in various roles at companies including Constellation Digital Partners and Georgia Corporate Federal Credit Union.
Erica Stanley
Director of Engineering, Play Apps Growth & Engagement
Google
Erica is currently Director of Engineering, Play Apps Growth & Engagement at Google. She has more than 20 years of experience working with Fortune 500 companies, including Boeing, FOX Interactive Media, Turner Broadcasting, and Oracle, as well as successful startups.
As an entrepreneur, technologist and community organizer, Erica is passionately working towards gender and multicultural inclusion in tech, via education and exposure to opportunities. She is the founder of the Atlanta network of Women Who Code, where she currently leads new developer workshops and organizes monthly tech talks, hack nights and networking events for women technologists. She also collaborates with companies within the Atlanta tech community to help improve strategies around diversity and inclusion and sits on the advisory board of 100 Girls of Code where she helps develop new strategies and curriculums to expose girls to technology.
Cat Starkey
Chief Technology Officer
Expel
Cat currently serves as CTO at Expel, a managed detection and response (MDR) provider. She has more than 20 years of delivering high quality applications leveraging the ever-evolving technologies of cloud computing and SaaS.
Throughout her career, she has led both small and large teams developing rich, polished, user-centric web applications and scalable server architectures. She has previously held leadership positions at companies including ARMATURE, Blackboard and Autodesk.
Colleen Tartow
Field CTO, Head of Strategy
VAST Data
Colleen is Field CTO and Head of Strategy at VAST Data, a data platform for AI, where she works closely with R&D and customers to define and prioritize the company’s roadmap.
She has over 20 years of experience leading engineering, data, and analytics organizations. Colleen’s core experiences lie in building and leading diverse, global teams focused on generating business value and customer delight, with a focus on data. She has previously held leadership positions at Starburst Data, ezCater and Veracode.
🎙 What does Colleen do when she’s not building category leaders? Tune into the 5 to 9 podcast with Andrew Lau to find out. On this episode, Colleen shares how she makes inappropriate words beautiful through her love of calligraphy.
Elaine Teoh
VP Engineering, Products & Experiences
Stash
Elaine is VP Engineering, Products & Experiences at Stash, a personal finance app that makes investing easy. She has a broad range of experience in executive leadership, SaaS, consumer and enterprise products, as well as eCommerce, agile development, microservices and more.
Elaine has previously worked at Postscript, Highnote and Flexport in engineering leadership positions.
Kathleen Vignos
Vice President, Software Engineering
Capital One
Kathleen is Vice President, Software Engineering at Capital One where she leads engineering for two domains in Card Technology: Collections and Recoveries. This includes customer-facing components on mobile and web; agent-facing components for handling customer service calls; all backend applications including batch and real-time processing, APIs, secure third-party data sharing, ML decisioning, and regulatory controls; and all related AWS services. These critical business domains impact over $1B of revenue for Capital One.
She also serves as SF site lead for Card Tech, engineering co-lead for TPM council, and Distinguished Engineer council. Kathleen previously held engineering roles at Twitter and WIRED.
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As we celebrate these 35 engineering leaders, it’s clear that their contributions go far beyond technical achievements. They are role models, mentors, and change agents pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
Want to learn more about some of the leaders on this list? Tune into the 5 to 9 podcast where Jellyfish CEO Andrew Lau learns not just about their professional careers but their passion projects too. Listen in here.
