Building at scale

KOHO is Canada’s leading digital banking platform, helping over 1.5 million Canadians build better financial habits through innovative spending, savings, and credit-building products.

Leadership Journey

VP of Technology, AI & Platform (Current) Set technology strategy and lead engineering execution across the platform. Accountable for platform reliability, AI/ML capabilities, and security posture.

Senior Director of Engineering Expanded scope to multiple engineering teams, driving platform initiatives and establishing engineering standards across the organization.

Director of Engineering Built and scaled the engineering organization, establishing the technical and cultural foundations for rapid growth.

Strategic Focus

• Platform Strategy — Defining the technical vision for KOHO’s financial infrastructure, balancing innovation velocity with the reliability and security demands of financial services.

• AI & Machine Learning — Championing AI adoption across the organization, from fraud detection to customer personalization, with measurable impact on business outcomes.

• Security & Compliance — Ensuring KOHO meets the highest standards of data protection and regulatory compliance—table stakes in financial services.

• Engineering Excellence — Building a high-performance culture that attracts top talent and delivers consistently.

Wayfair is one of the world’s largest online retailers for home goods, serving millions of customers globally. As Director of Storefront Engineering, I led a 140-person organization accountable for the customer-facing platform and core infrastructure.

Impact

Engineering Productivity & AI Adoption

Drove AI tool adoption to 94-95% across engineering teams by focusing on practical productivity gains rather than mandates. The result: measurable improvements in velocity and quality.

Platform Reliability

Established the operational practices that delivered 100% uptime for critical services. Invested in observability, incident response, and on-call culture to ensure reliability at scale.

Cost Optimization

Led infrastructure cost reduction initiatives through architectural improvements and resource optimization. Reinvested savings into platform capabilities that accelerated product development.

Storefront & Customer Experience

Owned the engineering organization responsible for the customer-facing storefront—the primary touchpoint for millions of daily visitors. Focused on performance, conversion, and cross-device experience.

Personalization at Scale

Led the teams responsible for recommendation and personalization systems, processing petabytes of data to deliver relevant experiences to millions of customers.

Le Tote pioneered the subscription fashion rental model, allowing customers to rent clothing and accessories with unlimited exchanges. The company was later acquired by Lord & Taylor.

Leadership

Engineering Lead Led the engineering team responsible for core platform capabilities. Owned technical architecture, team development, and cross-functional alignment with product and operations leadership.

Senior Software Engineer Delivered critical platform components for inventory management, logistics optimization, and customer experience. Promoted to lead based on technical leadership and team impact.

Key Contributions

• Platform Architecture — Owned the technical systems powering the rental subscription model, including complex inventory lifecycle management across distribution centers.

• Personalization — Led development of the matching algorithms that connected customers with items based on preferences, fit, and style—core to the customer value proposition.

• Scaling for Growth — Navigated the platform challenges of a rapidly growing subscription business with complex physical logistics, preparing systems for acquisition-scale operations.

At Ambush, I took full ownership of mobile product development in an early-stage startup environment, shipping applications across both iOS and Android platforms.

Contributions

• Product Ownership — Owned the complete product lifecycle for mobile applications, from concept through App Store approval and iteration based on user feedback.

• Cross-Platform Delivery — Shipped native applications on both iOS and Android, developing expertise in the distinct requirements and best practices of each ecosystem.

• Technical Breadth — Extended beyond mobile into backend systems and infrastructure—the broad ownership that early-stage startups demand.

Foundation for Leadership

This role reinforced the importance of end-to-end ownership and user-focused product thinking. The experience of shipping products to real users, navigating platform requirements, and iterating based on feedback shaped my approach to building product-focused engineering organizations.

ThoughtWorks is a global technology consultancy known for championing agile methodologies, continuous delivery, and software craftsmanship. This role established core principles that continue to inform my engineering leadership.

Client Delivery

Delivered custom software solutions for enterprise clients, including a learning and remediation portal. Balanced technical execution with stakeholder management, ensuring solutions met both user needs and business objectives.

Professional Development

• Client Partnership — Developed the ability to translate business needs into technical solutions while maintaining strong client relationships—a skill essential to technology leadership.

• Agile Foundation — ThoughtWorks’ rigorous approach to iterative development, continuous integration, and engineering discipline established practices I’ve carried into every role since.

• Domain Breadth — Consulting across industries built adaptability and the ability to quickly understand new problem domains—valuable preparation for leadership across different contexts.

Lasting Influence

ThoughtWorks’ culture of craftsmanship, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement directly influenced how I later built engineering teams. The emphasis on pairing, code review, and collective ownership became core to my leadership philosophy.

Jot Locker was an educational technology venture I founded, building a product from concept to market as a solo technical founder.

Founder Responsibilities

• Product Vision — Identified market opportunity in university course management and built a product to address it. Owned the complete vision from user research through go-to-market.

• Technical Execution — Designed and built the complete technology stack, including a specialized system for aggregating and normalizing university course catalog data.

• Business Operations — Managed all aspects of the business: product decisions, user acquisition, and operations. Full accountability for outcomes.

Leadership Foundation

Founding a company—even a small one—builds instincts that shape technology leadership:

• Ruthless Prioritization — With limited resources, every decision matters. This discipline informs how I approach trade-offs and resource allocation.

• User Obsession — Without a sales team, the product had to deliver clear value. User feedback drove every decision.

• Connecting Technology to Outcomes — The founder experience made clear that technology exists to serve business and user goals. This perspective underpins my approach to engineering leadership.