Ben Orozco
Executive-level engineering leader with a hands-on software foundation and repeated experience owning product, engineering, architecture, and AI strategy in SaaS environments. Built and led organizations from early-stage startup teams to 140+ engineers, partnered closely with CTOs, CEOs, product, and go-to-market leaders, and stayed close to delivery, architecture, and quality with a strong generalist mindset. Particularly relevant for senior AI engineering leadership roles: AI-first product architecture, agentic workflow enablement, globally distributed team leadership, and measurable business impact across high-growth environments including 10MM+ end users, Series-C scale execution, 100MM+ ARR context, and practical AI adoption that improved productivity by 10% while reducing code review time by 60%.
Experience
Apptegy — apptegy.com
High-growth SaaS platform serving 6,000+ school districts and 10MM+ users across the U.S. and Canada. Executive leadership scope spanning product delivery, engineering scale, architecture evolution, and AI enablement during scale-up toward Series-C and 100MM+ ARR.
VP of Engineering
- Helped hire, shape, and lead an engineering organization of 140+ engineers across multiple regions, strengthening manager quality, team health, and delivery performance.
- Partnered on organizational restructuring, planning frameworks, and operating rhythms as the company matured toward Series-C scale and 100MM+ ARR complexity.
- Led AI enablement initiatives across engineering, driving adoption of tools such as Cursor, Claude, CodeRabbit, and Gemini, resulting in a 10% productivity increase and 60% reduction in code review time.
- Sponsored and shipped high-impact platform and product initiatives with consistent cadence, reliability, and scalability for millions of end users.
- Advocated architecture simplification and cost reduction by evolving a gRPC-based microservices landscape and internal frameworks around clearer domain boundaries and more sustainable delivery.
Lead Software Engineer
- Led platform and infrastructure engineering across internal and customer-facing products, combining hands-on development with architecture leadership and delivery ownership.
- Built and scaled core services including identity, alerting, translation, data pipelines, forms, learning management, and real-time communication capabilities.
- Drove engineering quality through architecture reviews, code reviews, testing discipline, and team mentorship across a growing organization.
- Owned delivery across AWS, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and release management for a service-oriented platform supporting large-scale usage.
- Interviewed and onboarded backend and full-stack engineers while partnering closely with product on sequencing and agile execution.
HealthTree — healthtree.org
Mission-driven health technology platform for cancer patients and caregivers. CTO role combining product strategy, engineering execution, team formation, and operational maturity.
CTO
- Built the engineering team, delivery processes, and technical operating model across backend APIs, React-based clients, and data-oriented systems.
- Defined technology strategy and architecture aligned with product vision, balancing delivery speed, reliability, and user impact.
- Introduced DevOps, CI/CD, analytics, and support tooling that improved release quality, customer insight, and operational visibility.
- Established product development workflows and coaching practices that improved team execution, quality, and cross-functional collaboration.
- Recruited and retained strong engineers in a competitive U.S. market while keeping the team aligned to mission and outcomes.
Ecaresoft — ecaresoft.com
Healthcare SaaS and hospital systems business operating across Latin America and the Middle East. Executive scope across international expansion, product development, engineering, and operations.
CTO
- Owned technology strategy and architecture decisions supporting expansion into Argentina and the Middle East, including APIs, microservices, and serverless capabilities.
- Improved availability and resilience through stronger cloud architecture, CI/CD, automated testing, containerization, and DevOps practices.
- Aligned product development, operations, and performance management using SCRUM, Kanban, OKRs, reviews, and one-on-one coaching.
- Worked closely with Product, Sales, and Support leadership to align roadmap priorities, customer feedback, and execution against business goals.
CTO — Nimbo — Nimbo / nimbo-x.com
- Scaled the platform to thousands of MAUs and growing ARR by aligning engineering execution with product quality and user experience.
- Defined system architecture and launched reliable APIs, microservices, and supporting infrastructure across Ruby, Java, PostgreSQL, Redis, and Sidekiq.
- Delivered specialized capabilities including drug interaction workflows, full-text search, and a machine learning prediction and classification service in Python and Tensorflow.
- Improved team effectiveness through better recruiting, coaching, and lean product delivery practices.
Tech Lead — Nebula — Nebula / usenebula.com
- Built the product with Elixir/Phoenix and Ember.js.
- Established bounded contexts using Domain-Driven Design.
- Deployed containerized workloads on AWS Elastic Beanstalk.
BaseQL — baseql.com
Founder-led SaaS product turning cloud data sources into a GraphQL access layer; built from zero to acquisition.
Founder
- Built and launched the product hands-on across backend, frontend, infrastructure, and product decisions using Node.js, React.js, Next.js, and Tailwind CSS.
- Took the company from side project to successful acquisition, demonstrating founder-level ownership and execution speed.
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.
Brokerlit — brokerlit.com
Real estate SaaS combining MLS, CMS, and CRM workflows for property management and inbound lead generation.
Technical Co-Founder
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-level engineering leadership across product, engineering, architecture, hiring, and AI strategy. Experienced scaling organizations from early-stage teams to 140+ engineers while staying hands-on where needed with a practical generalist orientation.: 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 technical leadership with ownership of roadmap trade-offs, delivery strategy, UX quality, and business outcomes in SaaS and platform environments.: Roadmap planning; Resource allocation; Design reviews; UI/UX assessment; Problem solving with business focus; Project management;
AI (4y) — AI engineering leadership spanning AI-first product architecture, practical AI adoption, agentic workflows, internal enablement, and production-oriented experimentation.: 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;
Backend (17y) — Strong backend and platform foundation across APIs, distributed systems, service architecture, integrations, and scalable cloud systems used as the backbone for product and AI delivery.: 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) — Frontend and product-surface experience across React, Next.js, TypeScript, and UX-sensitive delivery, useful when AI products need fast iteration across the full stack.: 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) — Infrastructure and delivery leadership across CI/CD, cloud architecture, Kubernetes, observability, and operational reliability in growing organizations.: 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;
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