William Byatt

Director, Software Engineering

With over 15 years of experience in software engineering and leadership, I consistently deliver results by pairing a commitment to process and team development with top-tier engineering standards. My expertise spans regulation-heavy industries, including healthcare and finance, where I’ve created market-defining professional solutions. I have extensive experience building systems with Ruby-on-Rails, Go/gRPC, Elixir/Phoenix, Python/Flask, and a wide range of modern front-end technologies. My proficiency extends to deploying distributed, cloud-native SaaS solutions across AWS, Azure, and GCP. This comprehensive experience has enabled me to build action-biased, high-performance teams capable of rapidly executing ambitious projects and providing long-term support.

Professional Experience

Kaufman Rossin (Miami, FL)

Director, Software Engineering

December 2023 - Present

  • Spearheaded an agreement with an AI partner, leading to a successful rollout of multiple GenAI-based applications, positioning the company at the forefront of AI adoption in the industry.
  • Identified and procured strategic partnerships to accelerate the firm’s path to widespread AI adoption.
  • Facilitated firm-wide workshops on AI and generative AI, improving literacy and driving submissions to an internal AI brainstorm competition.
  • Authored and owned all application-development company policies, including code standards, SDLC policies, and security policies, based on priorities developed by CIO, COO, and CISO.
  • Collaborated directly with CISO to enhance security posture maturity, including aligning formal SDLC with WISP.
  • Established first-ever cross-team collaborative processes involving appdev, data, and IT teams, resulting in simplified data architectures and improved business intelligence pipelines.
  • Led a large-scale migration from AWS ECS to Azure AKS, demonstrating adaptability and expertise across cloud platforms.
  • Migrated CI/CD processes to GitHub Actions, streamlining development workflows and improving deployment efficiency.
  • Spearheaded an initiative to introduce deep observability using Prometheus and Grafana, enhancing system monitoring and performance analysis capabilities.
  • Introduced detailed and controlled FinOps practices, providing crucial insights into application and platform costs.

Engineering Manager

May 2022 - December 2023

  • Maximized cost savings and performance by migrating DB clusters to AWS Aurora Serverless, reducing DB costs by 80% and improving P99 latencies.
  • Increased productivity by enabling developers to onboard in less than an hour with Kubernetes-based CDE deployment.
  • Successfully implemented a 1:1 framework, resulting in improved professional growth, successful performance reviews, and drastically reduced turnover.
  • Reformed hiring and managing practices, reducing voluntary turnover from ~25% to 0% and increasing diversity in the applicant pool and team composition.

Senior Software Engineer

February 2019 - May 2022

  • Successfully planned, built, and launched a confidential document delivery platform in Ruby-on-Rails and React, handling more than 10,000 tax returns per year.
  • Implemented a comprehensive CI/CD pipeline using AWS CodePipeline, enhancing deployment efficiency and reliability.
  • Rolled out comprehensive test coverage for Ruby applications with RSpec and JavaScript applications with Jest, significantly improving code quality and reducing bugs.
  • Initiated a book club to encourage team-wide continuous improvement, working through several key software engineering texts.
  • Mentored less experienced developers in software development best practices, leading to all mentees’ elevation to senior developer roles.

CivicPro (Miami, FL)

Technical Lead

June 2018 - Present

  • Designed and implemented a system, initially in Python and Django and later migrated to Ruby on Rails and ReactJS, capable of ingesting bulk legislative data and parsing it using GPT-3.5-turbo.
  • Collaborated directly with NGO leadership to provide deep policy and legislative behavior analysis for elected officials, influencing partner endorsement and campaign operations.
  • Partnered with journalists and leadership at local NPR affiliate and the Miami Herald to produce in-depth data reporting on local governments.

Senior Software Engineer (Various Companies)

April 2015 - May 2022

Bar None Systems (Miami/Fort Lauderdale Area)

March 2017 - February 2019

  • Performed SDLC audits for clients
  • Managed and executed emergency software project rescues for clients
  • Consulted on digital infrastructure for nonprofits and political campaigns

Kipu Systems (Miami/Fort Lauderdale Area)

August 2016 - March 2018

  • Built SaaS systems in Ruby on Rails compliant with HIPAA and HL7 standards.
  • Developed features to facilitate secure patient data management and healthcare provider communications.

LocalSearch (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia)

April 2015 - October 2015

  • Built contract management tools using Ruby-on-Rails and AngularJS
  • Used RabbitMQ for asynchronous communications in a broad microservices architecture

CarePaths (Jupiter, FL)

Software Engineer

June 2011 - April 2015

  • Built features in compliance with HIPAA regulations and HL7 interoperability standards.
  • Created tooling to communicate with insurers over HL7 to facilitate billing.
  • Designed and implemented scheduling systems to coordinate patient/clinician interactions, including risk level identification.

Technical Expertise

Programming Languages

  • Proficient in: Go, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, TypeScript
  • Experienced with: Elixir

Frameworks & Libraries

  • Ruby on Rails
  • Go/gRPC
  • Elixir/Phoenix
  • Python/Django
  • ReactJS (including NextJS)

Database Technologies

  • PostgreSQL
  • MongoDB
  • Redis
  • DuckDB

Message Brokers & Streaming Platforms

  • Apache Kafka
  • Redpanda
  • RabbitMQ

Cloud Platforms

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
  • Fly.io

Container Orchestration & DevOps

  • Kubernetes (extensive experience with cloud-native deployments)
  • Docker/Docker Compose/Docker Swarm
  • CI/CD (AWS CodePipeline, GitHub Actions)
  • Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)

Monitoring & Observability

  • Prometheus
  • Grafana
  • DataDog

Software Development Practices

  • Test-Driven Development (TDD)
  • Agile methodologies
  • Service-oriented architecture, including microservice-oriented
  • Distributed systems design
  • 12 Factor

Leadership & Management Skills

  • Team Building & Mentorship: Successfully built and led high-performance engineering teams, focusing on professional development and retention.
  • Strategic Planning: Developed and implemented technology roadmaps aligned with business objectives.
  • Process Improvement: Introduced and optimized development processes, including SDLC, code standards, and security policies.
  • Cross-functional Collaboration: Facilitated partnerships between engineering, IT, operations, and business units to drive innovation and efficiency.
  • Financial Management: Implemented FinOps practices for better cost control and resource allocation in cloud environments.

Professional Development

  • Initiated and led engineering book clubs, fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
  • Regular attendee and occasional speaker at technology conferences and meetups.

References

Available upon request