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Portland, OR, USA

Keizan S.

Builds great products by building great engineering teams

With 25 years of experience as an engineer and engineering leader, I've been employee 10 to employee 10,000. I've learned to gracefully manage complexity and complications in people and organizations as well as in software and systems.

I've participated in several successful exits, both acquisition and IPO, and have participated in due diligence as a Venture Partner as well as both sides of multiple M&A transactions.

I've also guided teams through cloud transitions, replatforming, and many product pivots.

Whatever challenges you face, I'm here to help you come out stronger on the other side.

Hire Keizan
Keizan S.

Testimonials

Working under Gus's leadership made me a better engineering manager, technologist, and human being. His blend of honesty, courage, compassion, and deep technical expertise were all crucial factors in the rapid growth and success of our group at New Relic. He fearlessly holds teams and individuals to high standards, and his charismatic and visionary approach instill a shared purpose in individuals and teams, leading them through challenges towards positive change and exceptional growth.
DG
Dave GravesDirector Software Engineering, New Relic

Work

Revolutionized the New Relic Observability Platform

newrelic.com
Revolutionized the New Relic Observability Platform

I built and guided the team that transformed New Relic's back end from a collection of disparate tools to a single, powerful platform. Massive data and technology migrations (including a cloud migration) were executed by my teams, while maintaining 24/7 uptime at ludicrous scale

Experience

Mar 2024 — Jun 2024
WCI Inc

WCI Inc

Interim Head of Engineering

WCI Inc operates the largest carbon trading platform in the Americas.

  • Assessed sitting CTO and determined they were no longer a fit
  • Partnered with Product and Project Management leadership to improve visibility and accountability in engineering team
  • Improved Engineering team cohesion and broke down silos by implementing Agile life cycle
  • Hired permanent Head of Engineering
Apr 2023 — Apr 2024
Prefect

Prefect

Advisor to the Head of Engineering

Prefect is an data pipeline workflow automation platform. Offering best in class observability and orchestration to processes that are otherwise full of unneeded toil and error-prone.

  • Guided the Head of Engineering through multiple restructures
  • Reviewed and revised hiring strategy and artifacts for senior engineering positions
Jan 2022 — Sep 2023
Amino Health

Amino Health

Vice President of Engineering

Amino is a digital health company leveraging data, design, and consumer-first thinking to help people get more out of their healthcare.

  • Restructured entire engineering team to bring greater velocity and accountability
  • Catalogued ten years worth of technical debt and compiled list of top priority technical projects
  • Engaged contractors to tackle data pipeline issues without bloating FTEs
  • Trained and mentored a cadre of new engineering managers
  • Successfully navigated restructuring six months into tenure.
Jan 2022 — Dec 2023
Oregon Venture Fund

Oregon Venture Fund

Venture Partner

The Oregon Venture Fund is a boutique VC focused on companies founded in Oregon and Southwest Washington. Our elite group of investors contributes time, expertise, capital, and connections to help founders gain access to the right people and resources to grow their business, their way.

  • Participated in due diligence for multiple Seed and A-round investments, focused on Platform as a Service and other SaaS B2B companies.
  • As a member of the OVF Champions team gave guidance to pre-seed founders
Jan 2021 — Dec 2021
Micro Mentor

Micro Mentor

Fractional Head of Engineering

A small non-profit (and subsidiary of Mercy Corps), MicroMentor connects entrepreneurs with a lack of social capital (in developing countries as well as the US) with business mentors.

  • Hired Product Management advisors to develop a new product strategy
  • Facilitated the selection of a new vendor to replatform the product on a social SaaS
  • Navigated and mastered the intricacies and complications of working as part of a multi-national NGO
Aug 2014 — Mar 2021
New Relic

New Relic

Senior Director of Engineering

The creators of SaaS Application Performance Monitoring, New Relic is now an all-in-one observability platform.

  • Created the New Relic Core Data Platform Engineering Organization
  • Navigated reorganizations that impacted hundreds of engineering, rebuilding teams from the ground up
  • Hired, trained and mentored dozens of senior engineers and over half a dozen engineering managers
  • Was an active member of the New Relic Emergency Response Force, acting as a front line Incident Commander for global Severity 1 incidents and developing first-in-class incident management processes
  • Liaised directly with our largest customers to explain incidents and remediation plans, as well as advise on their own incident response process
Jul 2008 — Jul 2014
RNA Networks / Dell

RNA Networks / Dell

Principal Software Engineer

RNA Networks developed a storage and filesystem acceleration product that was purchased by Dell in June of 2011. Dell integrated RNA technology into their offerings as "Dell Fluid Cache"

  • Hired immediately after first round of funding to build RNA's core technology
  • Developed the technology for entirely new lines of business (low latency messaging, SAN acceleration)
  • Co-authored two patents
  • Was a senior participant in due diligence resulting in successful exit via acquisition
  • Onboarded and trained all new technical staff post-acquisition