David Grumm
San Francisco, CA - LinkedIn
SUMMARY
Accomplished technology leader with deep experience steering global, cross-functional teams in the architecture, development, and operation of large-scale systems. Proven track record of driving innovation, improving developer productivity, and leading strategic technology initiatives that enable business growth. Passionate about enhancing developer experience and creating efficient, scalable software ecosystems. Adept at fostering engineering excellence and mentoring technical talent.
SPECIALTIES
- Strategic Technology Leadership
- Software Systems Engineering & Management
- Enterprise Architecture & Domain-driven Design
- Agile Development & Operations (DevOps)
- Team Building & Talent Development
- Product Management & Innovation
- Cloud-enabled Infrastructure Transformation
- Organizational & Cultural Transformation
- Technology-Driven Business Transformation
- Information Security & Incident Response
LEADERSHIP HIGHLIGHTS
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Innovation and Business Growth Catalyst: Led critical technology initiatives that drove business expansion across several companies. At ThredUp, initiatives included AI-powered product search, rebuilding the website as a progressive web application (PWA), creating a custom CMS, and revamping native mobile apps. At Gap Inc., I led the “Store-to-Cloud” initiative, transforming retail operations with a web-based POS on modern cloud infrastructure. At Calculi Inc., I formulated the product strategy and go-to-market motion for Guide-Rails, catalyzing early market growth and later acquisition by Cloudbees.
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Strategic Leadership in Scaling Technology Operations: Spearheaded strategic improvements in technical operations, platform resilience and engineering processes at ThredUP, supporting a successful IPO and sustained business growth. At Sephora, instigated a transformative shift to cloud computing, boosting platform scalability and agility. At Gap Inc., drove automation of software delivery to significantly cut time-to-market for e-commerce and store systems changes, boosting efficiency and market responsiveness.
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Advancing Agile and DevOps Cultures: Instrumental in transforming organizational cultures across various companies. I established streamlined engineering team structures at ThredUP and Sephora, drove DevOps adoption at Apple and Verizon, and in-sourced and modernized software development at Gap Inc. These efforts resulted in accelerated feature time-to-market and enhanced team productivity.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
THREDUP, INC, Oakland, CA. 3/2020-3/2024
Vice President, Engineering - Product, Platform & Trust
Led product and platform engineering for ThredUp’s e-commerce marketplace systems. Oversaw full-stack development spanning customer-facing web, native mobile apps for iOS and Android, backend services (Ruby on Rails, Java/Kotlin, Node.js), and cloud infrastructure (AWS, Kubernetes). Drove developer productivity, fortified cybersecurity, and established data privacy/compliance functions.
Business & Revenue Impact:
- Integral in driving and supporting ThredUp’s rapid growth (revenue grew from $186M in 2020 to over $322M in 2023) by scaling marketplace systems to support 70M visitors, 2M active buyers, 7M orders and 100K+ new sellers/year, and extending the platform for 40+ Resale-as-a-Service brand partnerships
Leadership & Organizational Transformation:
- Led a high-performing engineering organization of 50+ technologists, including 3 directors, 4 managers and 45 software/systems engineers across web, iOS and Android streams
- Defined vision and successfully transitioned to a streamlined “pod” and “guild” structure - integrating stream-aligned teams for customer-centric development and platform teams for common functions
- Catalyzed innovation through hackathons and founding an AI task force, sparking team collaboration, creativity and engagement, which led to novel features like StyleMatch, Thrift-the-Look and virtual try-on
Technology Vision & Execution:
- Defined technology roadmap and spearheaded key initiatives, driving platform reliability, user engagement and business growth; notable examples include:
- Build-out of a progressive web application (PWA) which led to reduced “bounce rate” and higher functional quality (90%+ unit test coverage)
- Major website performance enhancements led to 236% faster load speeds, 134% better responsiveness and 66% improved visual stability, boosting customer sentiment, SEO rankings and conversion rates
- Development of a custom CMS for personalized content targeting, reducing engineering bottlenecks and increasing multi-page sessions by 24%
- Overhauls of native Android and iOS mobile apps, improving customer engagement and conversion.
- Creation of AI-powered product search, improving customers ability to find what they want amidst 4M items using photos or nuanced text queries such as “mermaid core” or “wednesday addams”
Engineering Processes & Technical Operations:
- Drove maturation of engineering processes and technical operations before and after the IPO, reducing development lead time by 30%, sustaining an average of nearly 30 production deployments/day and reducing frequency and severity of business-critical issues by 90%
- Instituted pragmatic policies and made strategic hires to fortify incident response, information security, and data privacy practices
Technologies: AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, Ruby on Rails, Swift, Java, Kotlin, Python, Node.js, TypeScript/Javascript, React, GraphQL, MySQL, OpenSearch, Github Actions, ArgoCD
CALCULI, INC. (aka GUIDE-RAILS), Santa Clara, CA 9/2018-3/2020
Senior Vice President, Product
Led product strategy and development of Guide-Rails, an enterprise DevSecOps SaaS platform enabling automated and efficient software delivery across major cloud platforms.
Key Achievements:
- Championed strategic vision and defined capabilities for the core product focused on enhancing developer productivity, streamlining software development and operations across AWS, Azure, and GCP
- Fostered high-performing engineering team through “dogfooding” Guide-Rails, enabling rapid feature iteration while maintaining code quality and security
- Drove go-to-market strategy, securing initial enterprise customers and $1.6M in first-year revenue
- Guide-Rails acquired by Cloudbees in 2022, becoming core of their SaaS Platform
Technologies: AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Cloud Foundry, Kubernetes, Javascript, React, Go, Cassandra
SEPHORA USA, INC., San Francisco, CA 12/2015-8/2018
Vice President, Platform Engineering & Operations
Led platform engineering and operations across e-commerce, stores, supply chain, and corporate functions, scaling up to support revenue growth from $4.5B to $6.5B.
Key Achievements:
- Grew to 450+ stores, scaled e-commerce platform to 200M+ annual visitors, and introduced augmented reality in mobile apps
- Scaled team to 120, including 1 VP, 3 directors, 9 managers, engineers and analysts owning platform services for E-commerce, Stores, Supply Chain and Corporate functions across US, CA, MX and BR markets
- Defined strategy and roadmap; instigated the move from data centers to cloud (AWS & Azure) leading to increased agility and cost efficiency; championed network bandwidth increase for better in-store experience
- Championed developer enablement initiatives, introducing standardized development environments and automated testing frameworks, improving code quality and reducing time-to-market
Technologies: Datacenter; VMWare; AWS; Azure; Oracle: DB, ATG, Micros POS; Java; Objective-C (iOS); Jenkins
VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC., Santa Clara, CA 6/2015-12/2015
Strategic Technology Consultant
Led a major initiative to enhance engineering productivity by adopting cloud infrastructure and optimizing software delivery processes. Developed and executed a comprehensive strategy for integrating a modern “DevOps Toolchain” with Verizon’s private cloud (AWS, Cloud Foundry).
- Achieved 9x increase in production deployment frequency through optimized software delivery processes
Technologies: AWS, Cloud Foundry, Docker, Java, C#, Jenkins
APPLE, INC., Cupertino, CA 9/2014-12/2015
Strategic Technology Consultant
Directed a team to develop a unified platform for continuous delivery within Apple’s private cloud. The platform enabled software development and technical operations teams to more effectively build, deploy and run cloud-native workloads.
- Enabled 5x faster deployment frequency for teams adopting the new cloud-native workload platform
Technologies: Mesos, CoreOS, Docker, Ruby, Go, Cassandra
GAP INC., San Francisco, CA 2006-2014
Sr. Director, Engineering & Operations, Global Store Technologies (3/2011-8/2014)
Director, Software Engineering, Gap Inc. Direct (2/2006-3/2011)
- Orchestrated the transformation of Global Store Technologies into an agile organization, in-sourcing engineering talent, growing the team to more than 130, supporting tech for 3000 stores across 9 countries
- Led the “Store-to-Cloud” project, modernizing store POS and infrastructure through cloud architecture, supporting $14B in annual revenue
- Facilitated e-commerce business growth from $500M to over $2B through a custom, unified, scalable platform serving all Gap Inc. brands
- Promoted Agile and Extreme Programming methodologies, enhancing project delivery across global offices
TRAVELOCITY, San Francisco, CA 1998-2006
Director, Software Engineering (10/2004-2/2006)
Sr. Manager, Software Engineering (2/2001-10/2004)
Lead Software Engineer (7/1998-2/2001)
- Directed 30+ engineers in development of Vacation and Cruises product lines, re-architecture of Sabre’s global hotel content system, and launched sister travel site, zuji.com
EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Davis
Bachelor of Science, Environmental Biology and Management
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
- CTO Forum – Technology Management Series (2024)
- CTO Forum – Rethink Generative AI (2023)
- CTO Forum – Rethink Digital Summit (2022)
- Harvard Business School – Leadership of Technology and Innovation (2017)
- Stanford University Graduate School of Business – The Indispensable CTO (2011)
- University of Virginia Darden School of Business – Leadership for Extraordinary Performance (2005)