// technical founder & engineering leader

James Burchell

I build products, teams, and companies — from zero-to-one prototypes to systems running in production at scale. Twice a technical founder, twice a business founder. Most recently, engineering talent at Oracle and Cigna (MD Live). Now looking for my next build.

// seeking: FOUNDER CO-FOUNDER FOUNDING ENGINEER FRACTIONAL CTO (CTOx) SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Email James LinkedIn ↗

Businesses founded
or co-founded

15+

Building software
or business

6×

Revenue growth led
at Max Muscle Nutrition

// at a glance

Competencies Overview

Languages

Go Python Ruby SQL Bash JavaScript C# / .NET

Leadership & Practice

Team Leadership Agile & Scrum Test-Driven Development Pair Programming eXtreme Programming Mentoring Business Ownership

Platforms & Infra

Ruby on Rails Kubernetes Docker Terraform Tanzu CI/CD (Concourse, CircleCI) Databricks / Azure Data Factory Apache Impala Flask Vue.js

// track record

Professional Journey

A chronicle of technical leadership, business creation, and production systems engineering over the last 15+ years.

Sep 2025 – Apr 2026

Oracle — Senior Member of Technical Staff

Nashville, TN

+Onboarded and validated AI compute servers in a new data center, scaling the process to ~100 servers running concurrently.

+Built Python/Bash automation, KPI dashboards, and internal tools (Flask + Vue) that cut manual effort and gave the team real visibility into bottlenecks.

+Introduced agentic AI workflows to speed up day-to-day development throughput.

+Authored runbooks and mentored new engineers, cutting tribal-knowledge risk in a high-incident environment.

Jan 2025 – Jun 2025

Cigna MD Live by Evernorth — Senior Software Engineer

Remote

+Shipped full-stack features across Rails models, controllers, and JS UI flows for a telehealth platform.

+Built an AI-assisted CPT coding tool using LLM output to improve billing accuracy from behavioral health notes.

+Supported a phased REST API migration off a legacy monolith with full backward compatibility.

+Mapped complex healthcare data flows and ramped into Databricks and Azure lakehouse architecture.

Feb 2024 – Present

Duplex Renovation & Airbnb — Owner-Builder & Operator

Nashville, TN

+Led a full gut renovation of one unit with my wife — reframing, rewiring, replumbing (fresh water and sewer), insulation, drywall, flooring, windows, tile, and hand-applied tadelakt plaster finishes, done entirely ourselves.

+Managed a contracted crew through the full renovation of the second unit, from scope and scheduling to final walkthrough.

+Built a Guest Favorite & Superhost Airbnb business that has a 4.99 rating with over 80 reviews.

+Ran the renovation and hospitality business end-to-end: permitting, design, budgeting, listing strategy, and guest experience.

Apr 2022 – Oct 2022

CreatorTesting — Founding Engineer / Technical Co-Founder

Remote

+Sole technical co-founder and full-stack engineer for a UserTesting-style platform built for content creators, built solo end-to-end in Ruby on Rails 7, Tailwind, and Hotwire/Turbo.

+Owned infrastructure and delivery — hosted on Heroku with a CircleCI pipeline — and got the platform in front of its first customers.

Jan 2020 – Feb 2024

VMware — Software Engineer, Backend, Data & Cloud

San Francisco Bay Area

+Took a usage-metering proof of concept to production: a Go service feeding an internal data lake that shaped sales and leadership decisions.

+Architected Python ETL pipelines over Apache Impala, powering reporting for leadership and customers.

+Migrated a Rails telemetry service from Cloud Foundry to Kubernetes and documented it for clean handoff.

+Built CI/CD pipelines in Concourse that raised release frequency and confidence.

+Mentored engineers, including one direct hire onto the team.

Mar 2019 – Jan 2020

Pivotal Software — Software Engineer, Full Stack Ruby on Rails & Cloud

San Francisco Bay Area

+Built and ran the billing and account management portal for a Cloud Foundry PaaS product.

+Owned a Rails API service measuring platform usage, central to customer contract negotiations.

+Championed TDD and pair programming across the team.

+Built CI/CD pipelines in Concourse for faster, more reliable releases.

Jul 2018 – Mar 2019

Self-Employed — Software Engineer, Full Stack Ruby on Rails

Remote

+Built and shipped a SaaS certification-tracking application solo, end to end.

+Ran Agile practices — pairing, TDD, CI/CD on CircleCI — with fast feedback loops straight to stakeholders.

Nov 2013 – Aug 2018

Max Muscle Nutrition NorthBay — Founder & Operator

North Bay Area, CA

+Founded and grew a family-owned retail franchise into the top 10% of new Max Muscle locations.

+Acquired a second location and grew revenue 6x through strategic expansion and team leadership.

+Led a team of up to 7 across two stores, using sales and inventory data to drive decisions.

+Built a loyal customer community around health, nutrition, and coaching.

Jul 2012 – Jul 2013

Pentair — Windows Desktop Software Developer

Menlo Park, CA

+Modernized a legacy VB6 app to WPF/VB.NET/C#, modeling thermal flow for industrial heat-tracing systems.

+Introduced automated testing and iterative development to the team.

Feb 2010 – Oct 2012

GoGoOffice — Technical Co-Founder

Marin County, CA

+Co-founded a legal records-management SaaS on ASP.NET MVC, C#, and Azure — bringing enterprise-grade tooling to firms of any size.

+Took a small team from zero engineering experience to a live, paying production system.

+Led the shift from waterfall to agile and lean-startup practices for product discovery.

// depth of practice

Proven Expertise

The stack behind the journey — where each discipline showed up, and what it was used to build.

Python & Automation

Expert

High-concurrency hardware discovery, multi-threaded validation scripts, and data ingestion pipelines.

Built Python and Bash automation that scaled server onboarding to ~100 machines running concurrently at Oracle.

Automated KPI reporting pipelines and telemetry analysis.

Architected ETL pipelines processing large-scale datasets at VMware.

Ruby on Rails Ecosystem

Expert

Enterprise backend systems, custom telemetry channels, and resilient consumer-facing platforms.

Maintained and migrated a Rails telemetry component at VMware and Pivotal.

Paired Rails with LLM output to speed up clinical billing accuracy at MD Live.

Built production REST APIs powering billing and usage-metering products.

Go (Golang)

Advanced

High-concurrency microservice design, proof-of-concept architecture, and low-latency metrics processing.

Took a usage-metering proof of concept to a production Go service at VMware.

Built the service feeding usage data into an internal Apache Impala data lake.

Gave leadership and sales real-time insight into platform consumption.

Data Engineering & Systems

Advanced

Data lakes, ETL architecture, partition schemes, and reporting layers built for scale.

Architected pipelines syncing large-scale datasets with Apache Impala.

Mapped healthcare data flows and ramped into Databricks and Azure lakehouse work.

Built reporting views in Mode and Tableau for leadership and customers.

Agile Strategy & Product

Expert

Certified Scrum Master (PSM I) and Product Owner (PSPO I), with a history of leading teams and co-founding companies.

Led cross-functional teams across engineering, operations, and sales.

Set the product strategy behind a 6× revenue scale at Max Muscle Nutrition.

Championed TDD and pair programming as standard practice across every team.

Startup & Business

Founder

Building and operating businesses from scratch — technical products, retail operations, and hands-on ventures alike.

Co-founded GoGoOffice, taking a small team from zero engineering experience to a live, paying SaaS product.

Founded and grew Max Muscle Nutrition NorthBay into a two-location retail business with 6× revenue growth.

Built and operate a Guest Favorite & Superhost Airbnb business in Nashville, from renovation through hospitality operations.

// credentials

Formal Education

The formal training underneath the practice.

Degrees

B.S., Materials Engineering

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo · 2006 – 2009

A.A.S., Engineering

Santa Rosa Junior College · 2004 – 2006

Certifications

Professional Scrum Master (PSM I) Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO I) N.E.S.T.A. Sports Nutrition