@REDACTED=false
@NAME=Justin Head
@EMAIL=jhead@jxh.io
@PHONE=(469) 236-6377
@LOCATION=Oakland, CA
@WEBSITE=github.com/jhead
# {NAME}
## Summary
Staff Engineer with 15 years of experience designing and shipping products, distributed systems, developer platforms, and data infrastructure. Track record of leading cross-org architecture initiatives, driving multimillion-dollar cost optimizations, and mentoring engineers at every level. Previously co-founded and bootstrapped a cloud infrastructure company to $500K ARR.
## Experience
### Principal Software Engineer, Workday May 2021 — Present
- Led architecture and execution for integrating acquired low-code agent builder (Flowise) into Workday's developer platform, overseeing 20+ engineers across multiple orgs
- Re-architected the platform observability product, consolidating 1,000+ Elasticsearch clusters into a multi-tenant system, saving >$2M/yr in OpEx and unlocking 10x customer growth
- Designed a consumption data pipeline for Workday's pivot to usage-based pricing, collaborating with architects across 3 orgs
- Prototyped and pitched new product concepts to VP/GM leadership, securing top-level funding
- Led technical due diligence for executive customer briefings, addressing security and data privacy concerns to close renewals and upsells
- Chaired the architecture group for a 100+ engineer org; mentored 12 engineers ranging from junior to principal level
### Senior Software Engineer, Workday May 2019 — May 2021
- Designed and shipped a distributed workflow engine that runs billions of customer transactions
- Owned multiple services end-to-end including on-call, incident response, and capacity planning
- Presented at internal developer conferences to audiences of 500+
### Software Engineer I-III, Workday Jul 2017 — May 2019
- Built a serverless, multi-region auth lookup service handling millions of daily logins across Workday's mobile and web apps
- Core contributor to a greenfield distributed workflow engine & integration product
### Co-Founder, CubedHost Dec 2011 — Jul 2017
- Bootstrapped a cloud game server hosting company from zero to $500K ARR
- Engineered a container-based control plane managing 10,000+ game servers across 7 regions
- Physically built and racked hundreds of bare metal servers; negotiated colo/transit contracts
- Grew the business, managed vendors, and led development as a two-person founding team
## Skills
- **LANGUAGES:** TypeScript/Node.js, Go, Kotlin, Java, Rust, SQL, Bash
- **FRAMEWORKS:** React, Express.js, ktor, Spring, gRPC/Protobuf
- **INFRASTRUCTURE:** AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Istio, MySQL, Redis, OpenSearch
- **AI TOOLING:** Claude Code, Gemini, Cursor, agents, spec-driven development
## Projects
### radish (open source, github)
- Real-time weather radar viewer rendering NEXRAD data from NOAA public datasets
### phantom (open source, github)
- CLI tool that bridges game consoles (PS5/Xbox) to cloud game servers; 100K+ downloads
## Education
### University of Texas at Dallas, Software Engineering, BS 2012 — 2017