BRIAN RUNK
brian@brianrunk.net

Senior technology leader driving organizational change and innovation.
Track record of transforming engineering organizations through deliberate  talent development and complex technical transformations.
Proven ability to modernize legacy systems while maintaining business continuity in rapid-growth environments.
Expertise in building diverse, high-performing teams, including creating innovative apprenticeship programs and mentoring non-traditional software engineers.

Director of Technology, Research & Development
FINRA
Nov 2023-Present
Reimagined and streamlined R&D program operations to accelerate innovation across the enterprise.
Lead FINRA's R&D program, overseeing a $3M annual budget.
Guide projects exploring emerging technologies ranging from graph database investigations to machine learning research and LLM-related efforts.
Transformed program operations through standardization, with a resulting increase of 25% in projects and participation.
Manage a coaching staff of senior technologists and project teams including programmers, data scientists and product specialists, supporting 8-10 research projects at any given time.
Coordinate executive review of R&D proposals, aligning technical innovation with regulatory strategies.
Present monthly findings to 250+ attendees from across FINRA, driving the adoption of technology and promoting innovation across the organization.

Sr Director of Software Engineering
Sparkfund
Nov 2019-Mar 2023
Established engineering excellence from the ground up, implementing strategic processes and governance to enable rapid scaling.
Senior engineering leader, implementing strategic roadmap and directing all technical initiatives.
Orchestrated the design and development of the full-stack SparkOS platform for clean energy projects.
Introduced Agile processes, KPIs for aligning teams’ work with company-wide goals and regular checkpoints to foster cross-departmental coordination.
Initiated practices for documentation, testing, CI/CD, site alerting & monitoring, metrics collection and reporting.
Drove the upgrade of security posture and SDLC enhancements required for SOC1/SOC2 compliance.
Performed due diligence related to investor financing and potential M&A activity.

Engineering Manager
Etsy
May 2016-July 2019
Transformed fragmented engineering teams into a cohesive unit while modernizing critical customer-facing infrastructure.
Assembled and guided diverse team of 20+ high-performing software engineers through significant organizational changes.
Directed migration of core marketing infrastructure while maintaining business continuity for a system serving 10M+ customer interactions per hour.
Integrated 24/7 global customer support platform, enabling thousands of daily interactions, improving the experience for buyers, sellers and staff, while achieving significant cost savings.

Engineering Manager
Constant Contact
Dec 2012-Dec 2015
Revitalized engineering culture and delivery capabilities while executing complex legacy system modernization.
Oversaw development and release of main CRM application rewrite, migrating 650,000 customers over 6 months.
Recruited over twenty engineers, building out a diverse, full-stack team.
Created apprenticeship program to identify and grow high-potential candidates, often from less-traditional backgrounds in the tech industry.
Instituted quality improvement effort, eliminating a defect backlog of over 300 issues and cutting the rate of defect introduction in new software by 80%.

Manager of Development
America's Test Kitchen
Nov 2010-Nov 2012
Led technical evolution from traditional media company to modern digital platform while unifying disparate systems.
Led creation of an online cooking school, achieving highest retention of any product in company history.
Managed migration of 2M+ users across multiple sites, featuring a unified database and single sign-on.

17 additional years of engineering and leadership experience.

Lieutenant, United States Coast Guard

Bachelor of Arts, Language & Literature
St Mary's College of Maryland