resume.json

{
  "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jsonresume/resume-schema/v1.0.0/schema.json",
  "basics": {
    "name": "David Laing",
    "label": "Principled Context Engineer",
    "image": "",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "url": "https://davidlaing.com",
    "summary": "Collaborative engineering leader who thrives in high-trust environments with fast feedback loops, authentic direction-setting, and clear accountability structures. Passionate about learning loops, structured decision-making, and data-informed leadership - built Decision Copilot to help teams make better choices together. Excels at leading initiatives I believe in and have helped shape, bringing genuine conviction rather than organizational theater. Values long-term thinking over quarterly theater and fixing root causes over chasing new shiny objects. Requires supportive leadership and clear decision frameworks to enable bottom-up innovation. Specializes in data reliability engineering, platform SRE, cross-functional team leadership, and pioneering work as Principled Context Engineer for AI agent orchestration.",
    "location": {
      "city": "Dublin, Ireland",
      "countryCode": "IE"
    },
    "profiles": [
      {
        "network": "GitHub",
        "username": "mrdavidlaing",
        "url": "https://github.com/mrdavidlaing"
      },
      {
        "network": "LinkedIn",
        "username": "mrdavidlaing",
        "url": "https://linkedin.com/in/mrdavidlaing"
      }
    ]
  },
  "work": [
    {
      "company": "Mechanical Orchard",
      "position": "Staff Software Engineer - AI Context Engineering Lead",
      "url": "https://mechanical-orchard.com",
      "startDate": "2023-09",
      "summary": "Platform Engineering team member who evolved into pioneering AI agent orchestration role. Built cloud infrastructure and established practices for AI-assisted development workflows. Collaborative IP agreement enables continued Decision Copilot development.",
      "highlights": [
        "Pioneered AI agent orchestration for Kubernetes/Terraform automation - creating environments where AI agents collaborate and self-correct",
        "Continued Decision Copilot development through collaborative IP sharing agreement",
        "Built and maintained cloud infrastructure on GCP and AWS for Imogen modernization platform",
        "Applied behavior-driven transformation to legacy system modernization"
      ],
      "name": "Mechanical Orchard",
      "location": "San Francisco, CA"
    },
    {
      "company": "Make Time Together Ltd",
      "position": "Co-founder",
      "url": "https://maketime.ie",
      "startDate": "2023-08",
      "summary": "Co-founded investment company focused on decision-making tools and small business finance applications. Built Decision Copilot from initial concept to open-source platform for structured team decision-making. Brings unique combination of platform engineering expertise and financial systems knowledge.",
      "highlights": [
        "Built Decision Copilot - open-source tool for structured team decision-making (started 2023-08)",
        "Developed full-stack applications using NextJS, React, and TypeScript for decision-making tools",
        "Applied platform engineering principles to financial systems architecture and data reconciliation",
        "Established IP sharing agreement with Mechanical Orchard enabling collaborative development while retaining ownership"
      ],
      "name": "Make Time Together Ltd",
      "location": "Dublin, Ireland"
    },
    {
      "company": "Shopify Ltd",
      "position": "Senior Staff Reliability Engineer",
      "url": "https://shopify.com",
      "startDate": "2022-05",
      "endDate": "2023-07",
      "summary": "Established Data Reliability Practice for Shopify's 100PB data warehouse, then transitioned to core SRE maintaining commerce systems for 3 million merchants during peak traffic. Role ended due to 2023 tech industry layoffs.",
      "highlights": [
        "Maintained platform reliability during $3.5M/minute peak traffic (BFCM) through data-driven monitoring",
        "Pioneered data reliability engineering practices for 100PB data lake infrastructure",
        "Applied long-term reliability thinking to commerce platform serving millions of merchants"
      ],
      "name": "Shopify Ltd"
    },
    {
      "company": "VMware Ltd",
      "position": "Staff 2 Software Engineer (Data)",
      "url": "https://tanzu.vmware.com",
      "startDate": "2020-05",
      "endDate": "2022-04",
      "summary": "R&D Portfolio Insights team member who established data engineering practices and provided data-driven insights to business leadership across VMware's product portfolio.",
      "highlights": [
        "Built and maintained dagster.io data pipelines for cross-portfolio analytics",
        "Established telemetry gathering and data curation practices for R&D insights",
        "Created data-driven feedback loops for business unit strategic decisions"
      ],
      "name": "VMWare Ltd"
    },
    {
      "company": "Pivotal Software Ltd",
      "position": "Director of Engineering/SRE",
      "startDate": "2015-12",
      "endDate": "2020-04",
      "summary": "Engineering Lead orchestrating initiatives across 80+ R&D teams in 6 global offices. Built SRE team and established company-wide practices for reducing customer deployment friction.",
      "highlights": [
        "Orchestrated balanced leadership team driving shared outcomes across ~80 R&D teams globally",
        "Built SRE team from scratch to operate Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes platforms",
        "Established reliability practices for pivotaltracker.com (1M active users) and UK charity donation platforms (£1B+ donations)",
        "Created data-driven understanding of enterprise customer upgrade challenges",
        "Collaborated with Google SRE engineers on SLI/SLO design and error budget implementation"
      ],
      "name": "Pivotal"
    },
    {
      "company": "StayUp.io Ltd",
      "position": "Co-founder",
      "startDate": "2015-03",
      "endDate": "2015-12",
      "summary": "Co-founded company to commercialize LogSearch open source project from City Index. Acquired by Pivotal after 7 months to form basis of PCF Log Search product.",
      "highlights": [
        "Created open-source ELK distribution handling 2TB daily log ingest for Cloud Foundry ecosystem",
        "Built product from concept to acquisition in 7 months"
      ],
      "name": "StayUp.io Ltd"
    },
    {
      "company": "City Index Ltd",
      "position": "R&D Team Leader",
      "startDate": "2008-12",
      "endDate": "2015-03",
      "summary": "Led R&D transformation at financial company, establishing modern engineering practices and cloud adoption. During tenure, children were born and led LogSearch open source project that became foundation for StayUp.io.",
      "highlights": [
        "Led LogSearch open source project for Cloud Foundry ecosystem log aggregation",
        "Established TDD & Agile practices across development teams",
        "Led organizational transition to open-source software adoption",
        "Pioneered migration to public cloud infrastructure"
      ],
      "name": "City Index",
      "location": "London, UK"
    },
    {
      "company": "BBC Worldwide",
      "position": "Agile Developer",
      "startDate": "2008-05",
      "endDate": "2008-10",
      "summary": "Early career exposure to collaborative development practices on BBC's digital media platform.",
      "highlights": [
        "Learned foundational XP, TDD, and pair programming practices",
        "Contributed to Kangaroo digital media platform development"
      ],
      "name": "BBC Worldwide",
      "location": "London, UK"
    },
    {
      "company": "Lucid Communications Ltd",
      "position": "Senior Developer",
      "startDate": "2003-08",
      "endDate": "2007-04",
      "summary": "Senior development role in communications technology company.",
      "highlights": [],
      "name": "Lucid Communications",
      "location": "London, UK"
    },
    {
      "company": "Vardus Internet Solutions",
      "position": "Developer",
      "startDate": "2001-01",
      "endDate": "2002-08",
      "summary": "Early career development role.",
      "highlights": [],
      "name": "Vardus Internet Solutions",
      "location": "Cape Town, SA"
    }
  ],
  "education": [
    {
      "institution": "University of Cape Town",
      "url": "https://www.uct.ac.za",
      "area": "Information Systems",
      "studyType": "Bachelor of Business Science (Honours)",
      "startDate": "1997-01",
      "endDate": "2000-12",
      "score": "Dean's Merit List",
      "courses": [
        "Information Systems",
        "Statistics"
      ],
      "summary": "Majored in Information Systems and Statistics with focus on data-driven decision making. Active in student leadership securing infrastructure improvements. Early lesson in turning limes into lime-o-nade when things don't go as planned."
    }
  ],
  "publications": [
    {
      "name": "From Values to Velocity: Building Momentum Through Aligned Systems",
      "publisher": "Unpublished Thoughts",
      "releaseDate": "2024-02",
      "summary": "Exploration of how shared values create alignment frameworks that enable sustainable team momentum - with practical examples from engineering leadership"
    },
    {
      "name": "Staying up-to-date with Kubernetes",
      "publisher": "Web Publication",
      "summary": "Explorable model for understanding enterprise software upgrade challenges and long-term maintenance practices"
    },
    {
      "name": "SRE & the Vulnerability Budget",
      "publisher": "SRECon AMER",
      "releaseDate": "2019-03",
      "summary": "Using Error Budget model to balance security patching with feature development - applying structured decision-making to operational priorities"
    }
  ],
  "skills": [
    {
      "name": "Context Engineering & Orchestration",
      "level": "Expert",
      "keywords": [
        "AI Agent Orchestration",
        "Team Environment Design",
        "Cross-functional Collaboration",
        "Decision Framework Design"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Financial Systems & Platform Engineering",
      "level": "Expert",
      "keywords": [
        "Financial Data Reconciliation",
        "Small Business Finance Applications",
        "Platform Engineering for Finance",
        "Investment Company Operations"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Modern Web Ecosystem",
      "level": "Expert",
      "keywords": [
        "TypeScript",
        "NextJS",
        "Firebase",
        "TurboRepo",
        "Full-stack Architecture Patterns"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Cloud Infrastructure & Platform Engineering",
      "level": "Expert",
      "keywords": [
        "GCP Networking",
        "Kubernetes",
        "Terraform",
        "Golang",
        "Bash",
        "Platform Architecture Patterns"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Data Engineering & Analytics",
      "level": "Expert",
      "keywords": [
        "BigQuery",
        "Python",
        "SQL",
        "dagster.io",
        "Data Pipeline Architecture"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Leadership & Methodology",
      "level": "Expert",
      "keywords": [
        "Authentic Leadership",
        "Long-term Systems Thinking",
        "Learning Loops",
        "TDD",
        "Collaborative Development"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Personal",
      "level": "Expert",
      "keywords": [
        "Father",
        "Roblox",
        "Minecraft",
        "Dad-jokes"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "languages": [
    {
      "language": "English",
      "fluency": "Native speaker"
    }
  ],
  "interests": [
    {
      "name": "Learning Systems & Decision Making",
      "keywords": [
        "Structured Decision Frameworks",
        "Learning Loops",
        "Long-term Systems Thinking"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Gaming & Family",
      "keywords": [
        "Roblox",
        "Minecraft",
        "Family time"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Technology",
      "keywords": [
        "AI Agent Orchestration",
        "Data Engineering",
        "Platform Engineering"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "references": [],
  "projects": [
    {
      "name": "Decision Copilot Development",
      "description": "Open-source tool for structured team decision-making, addressing the gap between individual expertise and collective decision quality. Developed under Make Time Together Ltd with collaborative IP sharing enabling continued development at Mechanical Orchard.",
      "highlights": [
        "Built framework for transparent, repeatable decision processes",
        "Created learning loops for decision quality improvement",
        "Established sustainable development model through strategic IP sharing agreement",
        "Growing community around structured decision-making practices"
      ],
      "keywords": [
        "Decision Making",
        "Team Collaboration",
        "Open Source",
        "Learning Loops",
        "IP Strategy"
      ],
      "startDate": "2023",
      "endDate": "2025",
      "roles": [
        "Founder",
        "Lead Developer"
      ],
      "entity": "Make Time Together Ltd",
      "type": "application"
    }
  ],
  "meta": {
    "canonical": "https://davidlaing.com/resume.json",
    "version": "v1.0.0",
    "lastModified": "2025-07-27T16:42:00Z",
    "dateFormat": "ISO 8601 compliant - all alignment requires arbitrary starting points",
    "theme": "macchiato"
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}