Ben Orozco
Hands-on VP of Engineering and CTO with 15+ years building SaaS products and engineering organizations across the U.S. and Latin America. Led distributed organizations of 140+ engineers through hiring, manager development, performance management, organizational design, roadmap execution, and architectural change. Retain deep technical range across backend systems, cloud infrastructure, frontend delivery, product development, and AI. Currently lead three Backoffice teams while remaining directly involved in architecture and selected platform initiatives. Best suited to roles that require executive judgment, strong engineering management, and enough technical depth to challenge decisions and contribute when needed.
Experience
Trivelta — trivelta.com/
B2B iGaming technology provider.
Engineering Manager, Backoffice
- Lead a 10-person Backoffice engineering group, with five direct reports (two Tech Leads and three Engineers) and five additional Engineers managed through the team leads.
- Own cross-team priorities, roadmap execution, delivery, and technical alignment across PAM, TCM, and Data Engineering.
- Remain hands-on as fractional PAM Tech Lead and developer for high-leverage work involving ClickHouse, a secure MCP connector, and migration to Amazon EKS.
- Shape the product and technical direction for a greenfield, AI-enabled support product tailored to iGaming operators; development has not yet started.
Lead Software Engineer (Platform Team Lead)
- Architected and built PAM admin capabilities in Python/FastAPI, using typed contracts and domain boundaries across legacy and greenfield systems on AWS.
- Delivered operator-facing reporting with cross-store analytics enrichment and tenant-aware currency translation, replacing legacy Tableau views with in-product dashboards.
- Raised engineering quality through architecture and design reviews, RFD/PRD planning, code review, testing, CI/CD, feature-flagged releases, and trunk-based development.
- Partnered with Product and Engineering leadership to scope and sequence roadmap initiatives against business value, technical constraints, and delivery risk.
- Established practical AI-assisted engineering workflows, including tool guidance, agent rules, documentation, and repeatable automation.
- Helped build the Monterrey engineering team through international hiring, technical interviews, coaching, and performance management.
Apptegy — apptegy.com
EdTech SaaS platform serving 6,000+ school districts and more than 10 million active users across the U.S. and Canada.
VP of Engineering
- Helped hire, organize, and lead 140+ engineers across the U.S. and Mexico, developing managers and engineers through coaching, feedback, performance management, and clear accountability.
- Restructured teams and introduced planning and delivery systems as the company matured toward Series C and more than $100M ARR.
- Led organization-wide AI enablement with practical guidance for Cursor, Claude, CodeRabbit, and Gemini, increasing productivity by 10% and reducing code-review time by 60%.
- Partnered with Product and executive leadership on priorities, organizational design, delivery risk, and architecture decisions for products serving millions of users.
- Drove cost reduction and simplification across a gRPC microservices architecture and internal frameworks by clarifying domain boundaries and reducing unnecessary complexity.
Lead Software Engineer
- Built Thrillshare platform services and APIs in Ruby on Rails for Vue.js, iOS, and Android clients, with Sidekiq handling high-volume background work.
- Established architecture, code-review, and testing practices that raised engineering quality across teams.
- Designed and shipped shared platform services:
- Built an AuthN/Z identity provider using OAuth2 and OpenID Connect, enabling SSO and user management across Apptegy products as thousands of new users entered the platform.
- Scaled school-district alerts from tens to thousands of notifications per minute through a multi-channel, multi-provider, multilingual relay service.
- Led shared services for forms and surveys, ETL, translation, email campaigns, learning management, and horizontally scalable real-time messaging.
- Owned CI/CD and production releases across AWS and Kubernetes, improving deployment consistency and operational reliability.
- Partnered with Product to sequence delivery, interviewed backend and full-stack candidates, and onboarded new engineers.
Brokerlit — brokerlit.com
Real estate SaaS combining MLS, CMS, and CRM workflows for property management and inbound lead generation.
Technical Co-Founder
- Built the platform in Ruby on Rails, TypeScript, React, and Next.js.
- Operated lean production infrastructure on Fly.io and Vercel.
BaseQL — baseql.com
GraphQL access layer for cloud data in Airtable and Google Sheets. Acquired in 2024.
HealthTree — healthtree.org
Healthcare platform helping cancer patients, families, and caregivers identify treatment options and accelerate research.
CTO
- Built the engineering team and delivery practices while contributing directly to Ruby on Rails APIs, React clients, data pipelines, code review, and testing.
- Automated build, test, and deployment workflows through CI/CD.
- Introduced Metabase, Sentry, and Intercom to make product usage, incidents, and customer feedback visible.
- Established a Kanban product-development process to prioritize work and track delivery.
- Improved engineering quality through technical leadership, mentoring, code review, and testing.
- Defined technology strategy and software architecture aligned with the product vision.
- Recruited and retained engineers in a competitive U.S. market.
Ecaresoft — ecaresoft.com
EHR and hospital information systems for healthcare providers in Latin America and the Middle East.
Panax — panax.io
Low-code tool for building business applications.
Full Stack Developer
: Launched an MVP for a no-code internal-applications platform using Node.js, Express, SQL Server, and AngularJS.OperIT — servicesinit.com
IT nearshoring consultancy services for U.S. companies
Software Consultant
: Designed ETL, analytics, and business-intelligence workflows and maintained existing software.SAP — sap.com
World's largest company of ERP software
Software Engineering Intern
: Practiced test-driven development for enterprise SaaS product lines using JavaScript and Jasmine.CotizaHoy — cotizahoy.com
B2B startup for car manufacturing industry
Technical Co-Founder
: Launched a B2B SaaS marketplace built with Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, and Heroku.NIC Mexico — nicmexico.mx
NIC organization for .mx top-level domains
Software Development Intern
: Developed internal and customer applications using PHP, Java, and PL/SQL.Skills
Leadership (11y) — Executive and technical leadership across organization design, team formation, talent development, strategy, architecture, and delivery.: Technical Leadership: Project scope and sequencing, Delivery management, Ownership and accountability, System design and architecture, Code reviews, Mentoring and coaching, Agile methodologies, Roadmap planning; Strategic Planning: Tooling and AI enablement, Vendor and cost management, Build-versus-buy decisions, Team composition and organization design, Architecture and design reviews, RFC/RFD technical documentation, Product and Engineering alignment, Resource allocation; People Management: Mentorship, Coaching, Performance reviews, Performance management, Conflict resolution; Recruitment: Talent sourcing, Hiring manager, Interviewing, Technical screening scripts/challenges, Interviewer coaching, Recruitment process;
Product (11y) — Product-minded engineering leadership: balancing UX, technical constraints, and business outcomes.: Roadmap planning; Resource allocation; Design reviews; UI/UX assessment; Problem solving with business focus; Project management;
Backend (17y) — Primary technical depth in backend systems, APIs, integrations, data access, background processing, and production performance.: Ruby on Rails: Rails 7, Sidekiq, TDD, RSpec, Capybara; Developing APIs: REST API, GraphQL; Serverless on AWS: Python on AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, Amplify, Cognito; Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, NoSQL; API integrations: REST, GraphQL; Other: Node.js, Python, Kafka, Rust, Elixir, Shell, Search engines: Elasticsearch, Solr, Git;
Frontend (9y) — Full-stack product delivery across modern web applications, admin tools, and server-rendered interfaces.: React: React Testing Library, Playwright, Storybook, Redux, Tailwind CSS, React Query; TypeScript; JavaScript: Node.js, Jest; Next.js: NextAuth, Vercel; Other: Hotwire and Stimulus, React Native, TailwindCSS;
DevOps (8y) — Building and evolving infrastructure from scratch: CI/CD, cloud environments, reliability, and developer workflows.: AWS: EKS, S3, EC2, RDS, Lambda; Docker; Kubernetes: GitOPS - ArgoCD, Kustomize, Helm; Other: Greenfield infrastructure setup, Terraform, CI/CD, CDN, Observability, Distributed systems, Cloudflare, Fly.io;
AI (4y) — AI-assisted engineering, team enablement, and AI product development grounded in evaluation, security, reliability, and production constraints.: AI tools: Cursor / CLI, Claude / Code CLI, OpenCode, OpenAI / API, Gemini, CodeRabbit; Multi-agent orchestration: AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md / .cursor/rules, Git worktrees, MCP / ACP, Agent Skills, Parallel agents, QMD workflows; Workflows: Plan-first for complex tasks, Parallel exploration and execution, Verification-first loops (tests, checks, review), Learn from mistakes via docs/rules updates, Automating repeatable workflows (skills/commands); AI product features: Chatbots, RAGs (Pinecone, pgvector), Context tuning and prompt refinement, Security and privacy guardrails;
Education
Hochschule Offenburg
🗓 Oct 2012 - Feb 2014
University of Applied Sciences Offenburg
ITESM Monterrey
🗓 Aug 2005 - Dec 2009
Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education