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Dawa S.

Over 2 decades of startup experience, early Etsy, CTO of Atoms

With over 20 years spanning development, management, and advisory work at companies including Atoms, Candid, Rocketrip, Etsy, and Arena, I bring deep technical expertise and leadership to drive results. My hands-on background as a full-stack developer along with CTO experience scaling engineering teams enables me to tackle complex challenges and build disruptive products. While I am currently focused on a predictive analytics startup, I also serve some of my time as a technical advisor and consultant for other startups.

I have 10-15 hrs of availability per week to work with teams and companies with need of technical leadership and execution. I can work as a retained advisor or be involved actively as fractional CTO or lead.

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Dawa S.

Work

Atoms

Atoms are the most comfortable shoes for everyday wear. Elastic laces, copper lining, breathable materials, and simple design make them the best shoes for every day

Arena Analytics | Leveraging Data to Transform the Labor Market

arenaanalytics.io
Arena Analytics | Leveraging Data to Transform the Labor Market
  • Changed engineering processes to cut down the average project implementation cycle from a couple of months to several weeks.
  • Doubled the rate at which we were deploying data-science model updates by improving collaboration between data science team members and engineering.
  • Empowered team to fix production bugs faster by automating deploys, and improving observability of the entire stack. We went from doing bug fix releases weekly to daily after the improvement. This change in culture resulted in our clients noticing the uptick in bug reports they were filing.
  • Mentored and coached first time managers, and sr. engineers for both morale and team productivity. I was able to understand and suggest solutions to some of the engineering issues indirectly during our sessions.

Arena Analytics uses predictive analytics to provide HR teams with workforce planning, talent acquisition, and AI recruitment tools.

Save on Business Travel Together

rocketrip.com
Save on Business Travel Together

Rocketrip was founded on the belief that there’s a better way to align corporate and personal interests than strict policies and mandates. Our mission is to center the values of ownership and employee empowerment in corporate travel. Our customers use Rocketrip to invest up to one million dollars a month back into employees, and we’re just getting started making a difference.

Etsy - Shop for handmade, vintage, custom, and unique gifts for everyone

etsy.com
Etsy - Shop for handmade, vintage, custom, and unique gifts for everyone
Find the perfect handmade gift, vintage & on-trend clothes, unique jewelry, and more… lots more.

Experience

Mar 2021 — Present

True Steps, LLC

Founder / CEO / CTO

Progress begins with direction. Misaligned efforts, no matter how many, won’t lead to success. At TrueSteps, we believe every goal is within reach when each move is thoughtful and purposeful. With experience, curiosity, and strategic insight, we guide you and your team to find the right path, ensuring every step drives you closer to your goals.

  • Worked with Vivian team to ideate and execute on various growth strategies for improving permanant staff roles. Improved sign up conversation rates for all traffic types.
  • Increased organic reviews collected for Facilities for Vivian from low hundreds to thousands per month.
  • Partnered with Cookunity to launch a new partnership sales channel with Tasty.
Jun 2024 — Oct 2024
Cookunity

Cookunity

Consultant

Partnered with Cookunity's team to develop and launch POC to test product market fit for pre-cooked meal delivery service for food influencers. Launched a Shopify site, integrated with Tasty and Cookunity backend to automate order processing.

  • Developed food influencer specific shopify site with integration into cookunity menu backend
  • Developed integration into cookunity ordering system to automate fulfillment and logistics
Mar 2022 — Jan 2023
Myth

Myth

Cofounder & CTO

Supply chain control center to help supply chain operators manage incidents as they happen, and streamline communication with suppliers and other partners.

Mar 2019 — Apr 2022
Atoms

Atoms

Head of Engineering

“These might be the most thoughtfully designed sneakers ever.” – Vogue⁣ ⁣

  • Worked with the growth team to identify and lead several projects to improve conversion 175% from 0.49% to 1.2% within a few months
  • Hired and managed local and remote team members to the engineering team.
  • Promoted and implemented customer account page to enable repurchases, personalization, and self serve order management.
Oct 2018 — Apr 2019
Candid™

Candid™

Engineering Manager

  • Promoted feature flag driven development to my team, which enabled release of key changes to the infrastructure several weeks earlier. We stabilized system outages while daily business revenue grew from 20K to 100K
  • Overhauled Candid’s patient review app. This project enabled customer support, photo review team, and dentists to work together effectively and accurately. Improved the time it took to process patient cases by more than 5 times.
Aug 2017 — Nov 2018
Arena

Arena

Director Of Engineering

Arena Analytics helps organizations vitalize, stabilize, and diversify their workforce. Leveraging insights from data analytics and machine learning, Arena matches people to specific positions, departments, and locations where they are most likely to thrive. By revealing each individual’s likely performance, Arena is transforming the labor market from one based on perception and unconscious bias, to one based on outcomes. Organizations partner with Arena to avoid the high cost of employee turnover, fill vacancies quicker, and optimize initiatives to increase diversity and improve workforce engagement. Unlike other HRTech solutions that use Natural Language Processing to match a job description to an application/resume, Arena goes beyond the theoretical and the traditional to analyze on-the-ground realities. Arena collects continuous feeds of outcome data from employers in addition to data from individuals and the world around us to predict the likely outcomes for people in specific positions and workplaces.

  • Changed engineering processes to cut down the average project implementation cycle from a couple of months to several weeks. Enabled daily production deploys instead of weekly releases.
  • Mentored and coached first time managers, and sr. engineers for both morale and team productivity. I was able to understand and suggest solutions to some of the engineering issues indirectly during our sessions.
Jun 2015 — Sep 2017
Rocketrip

Rocketrip

Engineering Manager

Rocketrip cuts a company’s travel costs by incentivizing employees to spend less on their trips. When employees get to keep a portion of the savings they generate, they start to treat the company’s money like it’s their own. Rocketrip’s software combines real-time travel prices, company policy, and a suite of patented algorithms to set a customized Price to Beat, predicting what a trip should cost. Business travelers beat these thresholds by making cost-conscious choices like booking in advance, selecting a cheaper hotel, or staying with friends. The company saves money, and the employee earns actual rewards. Rocketrip provides comprehensive reporting and seamlessly integrates into any existing corporate and expense technology stack. If you want to rein in business travel costs while improving corporate culture, visit rocketrip.com

  • Design, Collaborate and Implement technical solutions for business needs.
  • Brought in the culture of monitoring and measurement to help with decisions
  • Manage offshore and onshore team members.
Oct 2011 — Jan 2014
Etsy

Etsy

Sr. Software Engineer

Keep Commerce Human

  • Worked on product similar to smile.amazon.com for Etsy.
  • Migrated Listing & Conversation projects off a big monolithic DB into sharded MySQl databases
  • Restructure data, and code so that Etsy can continue to scale with its rising operational demand. Optimize existing code to remove inefficiencies both in terms of site performance, and developer productivity.
  • Technology: PHP, Java, MySQL, PostgreSQL
Aug 2008 — Aug 2011
The Higher Gear Group

The Higher Gear Group

Engineering Manager

  • Oversaw engineering and office operations at THGG's San Diego location.
  • Spearheaded development of THGG's call-center application and flagship product ezDesk (payment calculator)
  • Technology: Asterisk, Java, Spring, Python
Mar 2005 — Oct 2008
The Higher Gear Group

The Higher Gear Group

Senior Software Engineer

  • Created a quoting tool, ezDesk, dealers use to calculate/compare various payment options.
  • Refactored email management system.
  • Led development of integration platform with ADP and Reynolds.
  • Contributed to development of lead delivery system.
  • Contributed to development of our software delivery system to enable turn key software updates across all client servers. This in turn allowed the company to have rapid turnaround on the bugs and new feature requests.
  • General bug maintenance, research into new tools and process.
  • Technology: Python, Pylons, Turbo-gears, Twisted, Javascript, RPM, Postgresql
Aug 2003 — Feb 2005
Didit.com

Didit.com

Web Developer

Founded in 1996, Didit is a fully integrated marketing and communications firm, with offices in Manhattan; Melville, Long Island; and Burlington, Massachusetts, as well as a direct marketing division Didit DM in Plainview NY. Recognized as an Inc. 500, Deloitte Fast 50 and Fast 500 company, Didit is a privately-held industry pioneer that offers an unparalleled range of marketing, public relations and digital services, from “postcard to post-click.” The agency’s experienced professionals, innovative strategy, best-of-breed technology and advanced analytics provide a fully comprehensive marketing approach to businesses, delivering unmatched results for more than 200 clients across all verticals. Didit was co-founded by SEO/SEM thought leader, SEMPO founding board member, and Didit Executive Chairman Kevin Lee. For more information, visit https://www.didit.com/. Like us on Facebook www.facebook.com/DiditMarketing Follow us on Twitter www.twitter.com/DiditMarketing