About
I’m a proud family patriarch and occasional developer of ill repute. At work I’m co-founder and CEO at Speedscale, where we help companies test applications so they run faster with fewer errors in production.
Outside of work I’ve been an open source person for a long time. My dad got me onto Ubuntu in 2007 (he was putting Linux on the lowest-powered box in the house to use as a firewall), and I’ve run Linux at home ever since. These days that’s a k3s homelab on a Raspberry Pi and a growing pile of AI models running locally on hardware I already own. I worked at Pentaho back in 2014 when everything was open source, and that mindset stuck.
Experience
We automatically generate realistic API test suites for cloud-native architectures like Kubernetes. Launched August 2020, backed by Y Combinator, Sierra Ventures, Tech Square Ventures, Soma Capital, and others.
A side hobby with my brother Mike: we designed and manufactured bottle openers and bicycle frame components, made in the USA, sold online and through distribution. We wound the business down in December 2024.
Built and led a dedicated Architects team for some of New Relic's largest customers with the most complex monitoring needs. Recognized as Enterprise Technical Sales MVP in 2016 and 2017.
Worked with enterprise clients on the right use cases for Pentaho Data Integration and Business Analytics. An all-open-source shop, and the experience that cemented how I think about software.
After the ITKO acquisition, managed Application Delivery Presales for North America. Doubled the team, trained 300 CA folks, and tripled revenue in about 18 months.
Presented cutting-edge technology in live proof-of-concept engagements, including Service Virtualization to improve test coverage and speed development across TIBCO, webMethods, Oracle/BEA, and IBM middleware.
Application Performance Management for Java/J2EE (WebLogic, WebSphere, JBoss) and .NET web applications.
Built quotes and proposals for Network Management Systems, owned tradeshow and on-site demos, and ran the corporate co-op program. Wrote simulator programs in Java used internally and sold for over $400K in revenue.
Education
Elsewhere
Talks, podcasts, and writing across the web.
Talks & podcasts
- Scaling Time Series Databases on Kubernetes — KubeCon lightning talk (CNCF)
- The 4 Biggest Challenges of Scaling Cloud-Native AI Workloads — CNCF webinar
- Automated Testing with Ken Ahrens and Matt LeRay — Software Engineering Daily
Guest writing
- New Relic — all posts, including Combine Load Testing and Observability with Speedscale and New Relic One
- TigerData (formerly Timescale): Automated Mocking Using API Traffic
- Datadog: Stress Test Kubernetes with Speedscale
Press & mentions
- Speedscale: K8s API Auto-Testing for Rapid Iteration — Intellyx (Jason English)