About
Engineering leader who still builds
I’m Derek T. McKinney — a Director of Software Engineering with 18+ years across the full stack and the hardware underneath it.
I’ve spent 18+ years building software: front-end, back-end, systems, and the infrastructure and hardware it all runs on. Today I’m a Director of Software Engineering, and for the past 4+ years I’ve led a large team delivering a multi-million-dollar production platform.
My path went from hands-on engineer to engineering leadership without leaving the craft behind. I still design systems, write and review code, and run my own infrastructure — because staying close to how things actually work makes me a sharper leader and a better architect.
That range is the point. I’m as comfortable reasoning about a UI interaction or an API contract as I am about a database, a deployment pipeline, or a GPU in a server rack. I’m happy owning the whole stack, hardware included.
A lot of my recent work is applied AI: practical systems built around modern LLMs — agentic workflows, evaluation loops, retrieval, and the guardrails that keep them safe and useful.
However I engage — leading a team, architecting a system, or advising — I work the same way: start from the real problem, build something practical and observable, keep human judgment where it matters, and measure before scaling.
How I work
Principles
- Start from the real problem, not the trend.
- Build for observability and maintenance, not the demo.
- Keep humans in the loop where judgment matters.
- Measure first, then scale what actually works.
- Own the whole stack when it helps the team move faster.
At a glance
Role
Director of Software Engineering
Experience
18+ years
Leading
Large team, 4+ years
Scope
Multi-million-dollar platform
Depth
Front-end → back-end → hardware
Focus
Architecture · Applied AI · Infra
Let’s build something — or just talk shop
Open to engineering-leadership roles, technical advisory, and interesting problems.