Derrick M.

Experience

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  Agoda

  Vice President of Engineering

  Sep 2023 - Present

  At Agoda, we bridge the world through travel. We aim to make it easy and rewarding for more travelers to explore and experience the amazing world we live in. We do so by enabling more people to see the world for less – with our best-value deals across our 6,000,000+ hotels and holiday properties, 130,000+ flight routes, 360,000+ activities, and more. Agoda was founded in 2005 in Thailandby two lifelong friends with a shared passion for travel. Today, Agoda is part of Booking Holdings [BKNG], and we have more than 7,000 employees from 90 nationalities in offices across Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. In every department – from engineering to customer support – you’ll find that data and technology are at the heart of our culture. There’s never a boring day at Agoda as we aim to make travel hassle-free for everyone. If you’re ready to begin your best journey with us and help us build travel for the world, join us. For properties seeking partnership with Agoda, visit https://connect.agoda.com

  • Managed global engineering team of 100+, overseeing both technical modernization initiatives and the integration of Rocket Travel’s B2B technology into Agoda’s B2C ecosystem.
  • Scaled Agoda's B2B platform, securing top-tier U.S. bank and airline partnerships for loyalty travel redemptions, and launched a white-label platform on microservices, reducing time-to-market by 75% and cutting costs.
  • Migrated from AWS to private cloud, improving compliance and performance across global data centers, and enhanced fraud prevention achieving SOC 2 compliance with Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and data anonymization.
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  Mento

  Founder Coach

  Jun 2023 - Present

  Take Control of Your Career

  • Mentoring first-time CTOs and VPs of Engineering, providing expertise from years of experience in leadership roles within tech companies.
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  NextGen Venture Partners

  Venture Partner

  Jan 2018 - Present

  nextgen venture partners is an early-stage venture capital firm that is powered by a network of hundreds of part-time venture capitalists, “venture partners.” venture partners with nextgen have busy day jobs building companies and creating new technology, but they spend a small amount of time working together to find, finance, and support the next generation of exceptional companies.

  • Participated as a Venture Partner, offering strategic and operational guidance to portfolio companies during early growth phases.
  • Engaged in technical due diligence on potential acquisitions, leveraging extensive experience to provide critical evaluations and recommendations.

• Peakest Partners

  Chief Technology Officer / Independent Consultant

  Jan 2022 - Sep 2023
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  Dealer Inspire

  Chief Technology Officer

  Apr 2021 - Aug 2022
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  Aceable

  VP of Engineering

  Jan 2018 - Dec 2021

  Built by former teachers, NASA engineers and those passionate about education, the Austin-based team is obsessed with helping people with life’s certification challenges. After launching its first mobile app to provide accredited driver’s ed courses, Aceable is now expanding into other verticals for certification, including, most recently, real estate continuing education. To date, Aceable touts more than 1.5M annually and 20M in total, as it continues to expand nationwide. At Aceable, we are passionate about empowering people to learn. We’ve got big ideas and even bigger hearts. We work hard every day to make required learning and education easy, enjoyable and accessible for everyone — because that’s the way it should be. Our core values guide our interactions with our customers and one other in the workplace, and despite our constantly growing team, these values remain a constant. Aceable is located in the heart of downtown Austin on West 5th Street. There’s plenty to do and see around the office, from eating at delicious food trailers to attending an industry event nearby. At Aceable, you’ll always find a coworker eager to grab an espresso at a local coffee shop or stretch their legs with a walk around the block.

  • Scaled the team from 30 to 70+ and opened a nearshore hub to cut hiring costs in half, focusing on bridging development and coding capabilities for enhanced product delivery.
  • Spearheaded the technical consolidation across three software stacks into a singular SaaS platform following a strategic acquisition, significantly boosting operational efficiency and product cohesion.
  • Directed the migration of infrastructure to AWS cloud services, achieving a 40% reduction in operational costs while substantially improving the platform’s scalability and reliability.
  • Implemented DevOps practices, including Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and serverless technology, to significantly enhance deployment efficiency and system reliability across the organization.
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  RealStarter

  Member of Advisory Board

  Jan 2017 - Dec 2018

  RealStarter is a real estate crowdfunding platform focused on Texas based projects, but open to investors all over the US. Start with $5K. Wealth building via real estate crowdfunding

  • Involved in a pioneering SaaS crowd-funding startup, focusing on the nuanced sector of real estate funding and investor CRM automation/management.
  • Contributed expertise in security, distributed systems, WAN, and SaaS to solve pivotal challenges related to efficiency and security within the real estate domain.
• 

  Travelport

  Chief Information Officer, Agency eCommerce

  Jan 2015 - Dec 2017

  Travelport is a worldwide travel retail platform. Our next-generation marketplace connects buyers and sellers that share our passion for delivering exceptional travel experiences. Unconflicted and independent, we are reinventing a simpler future for travel’s complex ecosystem. 

  • Directed a global technology turnaround within Travelport’s agency eCommerce division leading to a significant stabilization initiative and the delivery of a long-overdue POS release.
  • Championed cloud-based modernization of the SmartPoint system, defining a strategic transition from desktop .NET applications to cloud microservices, boosting scalability and interoperability.
  • Managed a diverse global team of 250+ members across the U.S., UK, and Barcelona, with a strategic focus on enhancing global operational coherence and talent optimization.
  • Implemented comprehensive automated testing frameworks, achieving notable improvements in release reliability and system performance while aligning engineering efforts with core business priorities.

• Scout Analytics (acquired by ServiceSource)

  SVP of Engineering & Operations

  Jan 2013 - Dec 2015

• GridStat, Inc.

  Chief Technology Officer / Co-Founder

  Jan 2012 - Dec 2013