Ryan McNamara

As a technical program manager, I managed troubleshooting support for autonomous vehicle mission startup and resolved bugs found in startup and on-road. Tens of thousands of bugs were found in daily operations, which required extensive automation, data analytics, and cross-team coordination to triage and resolve the bugs.

I analyzed millions of bugs, analyzed the data for key improvement points, and developed a plan to drive down the bug backlog. I established a new triage process, built Jira automation and dashboards, and coordinated bug resolution across the 600-engineer group. The process improvements and improved visibility decreased the bug backlog by 80%, and the mission startup time was reduced by 50%.

I worked with the technology group of a healthcare technology company to improve their project planning processes and Jira implementation. The project focused on four main areas:

• Standardization and cleanup
• Planning, coordination, and visibility
• Security review
• Long-term resilience

I worked with engineers and managers to understand their current Jira configuration and processes, and built a backlog of proposed improvements and implemented them while completing service requests as needed. During this three-month project, I completed about 200 service tickets, built dozens of filters, dashboards, and structures, improved planning processes, enabled advanced metrics and reporting, and improved visibility around the company. I also greatly simplified their configuration by standardizing all projects to common templates and removing total configuration items by about 50%. I reviewed their security settings, improving the governance and data security. Finally, I implemented processes and technical controls to ensure that the improvements would last long after my project ended.

Led three teams with 19 software developers and engineers supporting the United States Department of Defense space system developers. They developed and maintained a platform of commercial and custom applications supporting space system software developers. I implemented industry-leading practices from Agile, Scrum, and DevOps to provide a highly resilient and secure platform.

The platform contained leading industry commercial software tools for planning, developing, testing, hosting, and automating software, and supported 100,000+ users.

The US Air Force created mission defense teams to provide an active cyber defense of aircraft cyber systems during combat and non-combat missions. Ten pilot units were started in 2016 to analyze the cyber systems, develop defense strategies and methods, and provide lessons learned for the rest of the Air Force.

Selected to lead one of the Air Force’s ten pilot units, I led the development of the JSTARS aircraft’s first cyber defense team. I led a team that analyzed the aircraft’s critical systems, set up system monitoring, and developed training for the personnel assigned to man this cyber defense system.

I led the project successfully through the discovery, design, and initial testing phases, paving the way for live use on combat missions.

Lavngarde is a safety platform for verifying the identity of and conducting background checks on individuals before meeting in person. The application uses the latest scanning technology to review public records for criminal activity and to ensure users can have safe interactions. The platform is geared towards supporting online dating, realtors, online marketplace sales, and anyone who wants to ensure their interactions are safe when they move from the virtual to the real world.

Led the project from inception through discovery, planning, and implementation of a highly robust software solution. Collected customer requirements, devised a technical implementation to meet the requirements, and successfully delivered an enterprise-ready solution.
The team developed a cloud-to-cloud backup solution for Office 365 services, including Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. All data was retreived by automated API calls and stored in S3, MongoDB, and Elastic Beanstalk, providing a highly scallable architecture. The product was engineered for use in a multi-tenant environment with minimal configuration needed by customers.

I was tasked to lead the development of a new tactical communications package for the US Air Force that was small enough to fit on a single C-130 cargo plane and provide communications support for up to 250 users. There was also the need for two supplemental packages to support 350 additional users and legacy RADAR communications.

I served as the project lead, in charge of all engineering, testing, and accreditation. I led the project from the design phase through Air Force headquarters approval. Since then, communications packages have been fielded by over 50 units during combat operations and humanitarian support missions.

A DoD software development platform supporting 100,000+ software developers and providing dozens of commercial software tools required software asset management to ensure compliance and analyze costs.

I led a proposal team to apply for the program and got selected. I then led the program from the discovery phase through implementation, meeting 100% of the requirements and deadlines. The team used ServiceNow’s Discovery and Software Asset Management modules to discover the customer’s assets, apply for purchased software licenses, and analyze the results for compliance and cost savings.

The successful implementation of the program led the customer to increase the scope of the project from $600,000 to $2.5 million. The program ensured software compliance for the customer and provided cost savings far exceeding the cost of the program.

As a software development manager, I led the implementation of Agile, Scrum, and DevOps methodologies on a government software development contract. The agency used waterfall management for decades and this cutting-edge software development contract was one of the first to use these new methodologies, intended as a pilot unit.

The contract was highly successful in its performance, as well as the use of the new methodologies, leading to the agency’s further expansion of agile management to contract implementation and requirements management. The structure of the contract, planning and management tools (Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket), and adaptation of Agile to government acquisition and management were adopted by several other contracts within and without the agency.

Terravigil was founded to provide unbiased world news and to show readers how they can make a difference in the stories they read. I founded Terravigil and performed all designs, marketing, and content optimization. I hired a Toptal developer to help create Terravigil, which inspired me to work for Toptal myself.

Terravigil was successfully launched in May 2020. The application was designed with the latest technology to maximize automation, scalability, and efficiency. It collects news from thousands of sources, filters out biased articles, and rates them with advanced software to show only the top stories.

The application is coded in React and utilizes a serverless front end. Lambda performs processing, and the data is accessed through Elasticsearch. The application is highly resilient and requires minimal overhead. It uses several API services for data processing and software integration.

Chappellet is Napa Valley’s second-oldest winery and produces high-quality wines of world renown. Chappellet partnered with an innovation and design class at the University of Notre Dame to provide them with detailed analysis and plans to improve direct-to-consumer sales, engage with younger generations, and enhance their technology use.

I led one of the consulting teams and was selected to present our recommendations and a follow-on project to help them implement a pop-up winery in Chicago.

Our team conducted market analysis, customer interviews, and design thinking to provide Chappellet with actionable recommendations. Our proposals included a pop-up winery, virtual wine tastings, an improved website and mobile application interface, and an enhanced unboxing experience.

Chappellet has successfully implemented the above ideas, except for the pop-up winery. The onset of COVID-19 required us to cancel the pop-up winery plan in the middle of the project but also significantly increased the success of the virtual wine tastings.

Managed a multi-functional engineering team that performed payment processing, invoicing, data analytics, upgrades, and maintenance. Oversaw financial operations for monthly invoicing, accounts receivable, and payments to affiliate marketers, ensuring timely, accurate payments each month. Led the migration of all affiliate links, partner earnings data, brand advertising metrics, and payment data to the new platform, ensuring all data was preserved and all integrations were continued. Managed onboarding and ongoing relationships with companies marketing their products through the platform, including Samsung and Best Buy. Provided data analytics support to sales, company leadership, and other business functions, including migrating to a new data analytics platform.

As the company head of operations and technical program management, I organized all company activities into distinct programs, providing structure, reportability, metrics (KPIs), and visibility across the company. This effort guided research and development of the startup and enabled the company to scale while maintaining clear direction. I instilled a culture of accountability, focus, and motivation that greatly accelerated development. I also provided a framework for AI research, software development, DevOps engineering, neuroscience, and clinical operations to collaborate seamlessly.

I established a vendor management and procurement process for an AI and software development startup, fueling rapid research and development of a neuromodulation platform. I instilled automation, scalability, integration, and security in dozens of SaaS, AI, and cloud services, supporting AI and software development teams at five sites across four time zones. I also supported the MLOps pipeline.

I enabled a startup to scale up operations and personnel after receiving grant, pre-seed, and seed funding by building a recruitment and hiring pipeline. I vetted 10,000+ applicants and hired 20+ world-class technical experts in highly specialized fields. I accelerated onboarding procedures through automation, in-person interaction, and education of new employees, allowing them to land code and contribute to development within days.