Change Agent. Servant Leader. Cloud Native. Colorado Native.
Bio
John has a uniquely balanced perspective on software development. He has held lead contributor roles as a product engineer, as a software engineer in test, and as a site reliability engineer - delivering code on everything from appliances to software as a service. John's 360 degree view of the entire development process provides unparalleled perspective in the arena of project design and execution. John now brings his nearly 20 years of technology experience to the management ranks, where his teams are building innovative, effective, stable solutions in a timely and predictable manner. Above all, John prides himself on building and running teams that are successful as a byproduct of a culture of collaboration.
Senior Engineering Manager
Reggora
2021 - 2022
Managed three software engineering squads. Created resource allocation service(s) to deliver on Reggora's company vision of enabling 2-day turn times for appraisals, which is revolutionizing the industry, while simultaneously reducing tech debt and driving modern engineering standards.
Senior Engineering Manager
Comcast, VIPER
2017-2021
Bootstrapped and drove the Enterprise Automation (EA) team which functioned as both a SET and SETi group within Comcast's VIPER. Designed and built hardware / software platform for the automation of all video playback testing, which improved test cycle time from days to hours. Automated all the things!
Senior Software Engineer
NetApp
2012 - 2017
Bootstrapped two separate teams - DevOps and SDET. DevOps team was created to build and maintain lab environments for internal engineering teams. SDET organization was created to build a fully-automated test capability. Framework established is used at NetApp to this day.
Cloud Architect
nVoq
2011 - 2012
Designed and built an AWS-based public cloud capability that allowed nVoq to align it's operations with business drivers - cost and customer experience. Included blue-green deployments capability in 100% automated fashion, with monitoring and tooling to auto-scale the environments as needed.
Director of Technology
Video Bloom
2010 - 2011
Lead software development team in the reconstruction and launch of the next generation of the VideoBloom's video management platform, while introducing Agile SDLC methodologies and QA processes to the company.
Lead SRE
Intel
2006 - 2010
In addition to supporting the core filtering product, owned the architecture and delivery of environments for three new product lines - email archiving, web filtering, and partner integrations ... all built to operate seamlessly on MXLogic's global data center footprint.
Software Engineer
UCAR / NCAR
2000 - 2005
Worked in conjunction with engineering and science teams to enhance / create weather-forecasting algorithms, optimized to run on some of the largest compute clusters in the world.
Interested in learning more about my professional background?
Education
Other than "Hard Knocks" ...
August 1997 - May 2002
University of Colorado
Aerospace Engineering
(BS - ASEN)
Rocket Science!
(Need I say more ...)
August 1997 - May 2002
University of Colorado
Computer Science
(BS - CSCI)
Operating Systems, Algorithms, and AI.
My Skills
Mentoring
Mentoring is one of the reasons I gravitated to MGMT from the IC ranks - there's nothing more rewarding than passing along one's knowledge. Developing talent vital to every teams' success as a cornerstone of culture. In this photo, two of my mentees are in turn showing what they know to our newest member ... so proud.
Technical Depth
My lengthy and well-rounded background as a contributor, combined with hands on exposure to current technology platforms, makes me a better manager ... not because I wish to become personally involved in the work, but because I can guide from experience ... help teams see potential obstacles as well as understand the bigger picture.
Agile Methodologies
Agile principles and practices are my bread and butter. I am a certified scrum master, but do not insist on orthodoxy. Agile is best implemented on a per-team / per-company basis and different teams need slightly different tuning. Nevertheless, the principles are stalwart ... fail fast, be customer focused, and drive to the incremental deliverable.
Team Building
Team building is just plain fun. I relish the challenge and opportunity of being able to bring a team together around a common goal. I firmly believe that the best solutions manifest from open dialogue and collaboration - the team is greater than the sum of its parts. And, yes, of course ... when the mission is accomplished ... Sushi!
Startups
The Culture, The Life ... of StartUps
I have been lucky and honored to be a member of two significant startup successes.
I love the culture, drive, and innovation of the people you find on these types of teams.
I'm always on the look-out for the hat trick ... just sayin' ...
SolidFire (based in Boulder, CO) was purchased by Network Appliance (NASDAQ: NTAP) for $860M in December 2015.
At the time, this was the largest ever Colorado startup acquisition.
MXLogic (based in Englewood, CO) was purchased by McAfee (NASDAQ: MFE) for $140M in 2009.
A year later, McAfee was purchased by Intel (NASDAQ: INTEL) for $7.6B.
John Eckhardt
"Done properly, the core discipline of developers, qa, and ops is one and the same - software engineering. Some write code that's revenue generating, others write code that tests code, and still others write code that provides environments. Notwithstanding a bit of domain expertise, all these role are interchangeable and equal insofar as they (should) have the same primary competency."