Glade Lynch

Summary

In an industry being reshaped by AI, I bring expert understanding of when and where it delivers real impact. I solve problems, not symptoms. I lead with radical candor, extreme ownership, and a bias toward action, building teams that are empowered to decide, trusted to execute, and supported. Whether I'm coaching leaders, guiding technical direction, or aligning stakeholders, my focus is the same. Make sure the team understands the problem, align on the path forward, then move decisively.

Experience

Senior Engineering Manager

Sunday

1 year 2 months - 2025 to Present

Engineering Management , React , Go , JavaScript , Python , Django , Microservices , GCP ,

• Functioned at director scope: drove cross-org roadmap and capacity planning, presented to executive leadership, partnered with senior leadership on hiring and org design, and served as technical advisor for systems architecture across all engineering teams.
• Led the Post-Purchase Customer Experience team (6 engineers, 1 PM partner, 2 designers) to a 400 bps lift in customer retention — the company's first positive retention movement since inception — through data-informed product development and iterative A/B experimentation across the post-purchase journey.
• Led the Mobile App team (2 engineers, 1 designer, 1 PM partner) to 25,000 downloads in its first week and a 4+ star rating, with direct integration into retention and AI personalization pipelines.
• Drove AI adoption across the full engineering org, shifting teams from manual to automated development and delivery practices. The patterns were adopted company-wide, multiplying output well beyond my direct reports.
• Served as primary cross-functional partner to the dedicated AI team, aligning agentic infrastructure with product and engineering needs across the org.
• Grew the highest-performing team in the engineering org through automated processes, individualized coaching and staying hands-on across React and Python, while keeping zero voluntary attrition across two years.

Staff Full-Stack Engineer

Totara Learning

5 years - 2019 to 2025

Engineering Management , PHP , Angular , Go , Python , Agile , PowerBi , SQL , AWS ,

• Reduced case volume by 22% and improved 3-day resolution rate to 93% by designing and deploying operational AI and workflow automation — measurable business impact through autonomous process design, not just tooling.
• Maintained data integrity across 5 federal agencies by delivering DISC-compliant systems and regulatory reporting tooling — environments where accuracy directly determined audit outcomes.
• Migrated 175,000 customers from a legacy system to ServiceNow, removing siloed architecture by coordinating multiple agencies and increasing transparency.
• Developed Python and Go data analysis tools used across federal teams in PowerBi, surfacing usage patterns and operational weak points.

General Manager & Founder

Big Dumb Gaming

6 years - 2016 to 2023

Hiring & Team Building , Coaching & Leadership Development , Budget & P&L Ownership , Capacity & Roadmap Planning , Go , PHP ,

• Founded from zero and scaled it into a top-5 world esports organization. Built the full operational and technical stack from scratch, growing to a 35-person team (players, engineers, event staff, coaches) with six top-5 world finishes.
• Negotiated $2,000,000 partnerships with major industry names such as the Golden State Warriors, Zenni, and Redbull ranging from sponsorships to product integrations.
• Directed professional broadcasts that held more than 50,000 live viewers and well over 1,000,000 total unique viewers, coordinating 20 event staff and 10 casters.
• Raised over $143,000 for Girls Who Code, RAINN, and Rise Above the Disorder, using our large fanbase to make a tangible global impact.

Senior Web Developer

Clay Pot Creative

2 years - 2017 to 2019

Engineering Management , PHP , JavaScript , WordPress , Shopify , Go , Vue , React , AWS ,

• Led a team of 5 engineers and designers delivering commerce platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce) and enterprise ERPs, building configurable, reusable systems across retail and ecommerce clients.
• Created stage-oriented product delivery plans through client meetings and open team input and collaboration.
• Dramatically reduced startup lift for new projects by creating 15 reusable custom plugins, 2 themes, and 6 internal tools.

Engineering Manager & Founder

Product of Caffeine

6 years - 2009 to 2015

Engineering Management , Shopify , WooCommerce , C# , PHP , GCP , AWS , Budget & P&L Ownership ,

• Founded and scaled a web development studio from zero to 7 full-time employees, delivering ecommerce and enterprise platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce) for clients including the NFL, Microsoft, and Penton Media.
• Led the team through the complete project delivery workflow, from initial client consultation, design, and development to final product delivery.
• Achieved 0 turnover and consistently ahead of schedule deliveries through a culture based on candor, collaboration, customer-first decision-making, and coaching.

Software Engineer & Platform Architect

Enventive Engineering

2 years - 2015 to 2017

AWS , Technology Strategy , CI/CD , REST , JavaScript , jQuery , KendoUI ,

• Created a SAAS platform to allow for hundreds of customers to use computationally heavy mechanical tolerance simulations through a web interface.
• Architected cloud solution, migrating from bare metal Windows servers to load-balanced & distributed AWS.
• Designed client front end that ingested data from REST APIs to give feature parity with highly complex software.

Web Developer

Madwire Media

1 year 1 months - 2008 to 2009

PHP , WordPress , BigCommerce , JavaScript , HTML/CSS , jQuery , Drupal ,