Agents belong in the pipeline, not the demo
What it took to turn Jira tickets into running Playwright tests, and where the agent still needs a human.
VP EngineeringBrookline, NH
Remote
Remote
Engineering leadership & agentic AI
I build the teams and the platforms that ship.
26 years writing production code and leading the people who write it. Today I run a distributed engineering org across the U.S. and India, and I still spend part of every week in the architecture and the pull requests. I modernize regulated platforms, tighten delivery, and put AI to work where it actually saves time.
- Years building
- 26+
- Deploy frequency
- +60%
- Prod incidents
- −90%
- Compliance
- SOC 2 · HIPAA
The approachHow I work
Leadership with hands on the code.
Most engineering problems are delivery problems in disguise. I start where the system actually is, with the pipeline, the incident log and the people, then fix the parts that slow everyone down. Infrastructure as code, honest CI/CD, and AI-assisted engineering let a lean team outrun a bigger one.
Selected work1999 – 2026
Selected work
-
01
2025–26
Agentic QA system
An agent that reads acceptance criteria from Jira, writes TestRail cases and generates Playwright end-to-end tests. Requirements become traceable, executable coverage without manual test authoring.
-
02
2022–26
Healthcare SaaS modernization
Rebuilt CI/CD governance and DevSecOps automation for SaaS and hybrid mobile products. Deployments up 60%, production incidents down about 90%, SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA ready.
-
03
2019–22
Clinical imaging platform migration
Moved a legacy Perl monolith toward containerized AWS services and service-oriented iPACS components. Deployment cycles went from days to hours.
-
04
2018–19
ndau blockchain wallets
Designed and shipped iOS and Android wallets with multi-signature security, plus the web app that gathered addresses for the ndau genesis block.
-
05
2013–18
Clinical trial imaging & monitoring
Architected a medical imaging trial platform with WebSocket links to DICOM viewers, and helped build a Data Driven Monitoring SaaS product.
Points of viewWriting
Points of view
Ship more, break less
How CI/CD governance raised deploy frequency 60% while cutting incidents by nine tenths.
The hands-on VP
Why staying in the code makes a VP faster at unblocking teams, and how to do it without becoming the bottleneck.
AboutSignal to software
From sonar benches to cloud platforms.
I started as an FCC-licensed technician at Raytheon Marine, repairing sonar, Loran C and GPS gear. That habit of tracing a fault to its source never left. Since then I've built e-learning APIs, clinical trial platforms, blockchain wallets and healthcare SaaS, and taught the MERN stack to career-changers at UNH and Penn.
TypeScript · Node · React / React Native · Java / Spring · Python · AWS · GCP · Terraform · Docker / Kubernetes · GitHub Actions · Playwright · OpenAI · Anthropic
B.S. Computer Science, Rivier University · A.S. Computer Engineering, NH Technical College
- 2022 – nowVP of Engineering · Fynn.io
- 2019 – nowPrincipal Engineer / Consultant · Independent
- 2019 – 2022Director, Software Engineering · Invicro
- 2017 – 2022Instructor · UNH, Penn, UMass bootcamps
- 2018 – 2019Senior Software Engineer · Oneiro
- 2013 – 2018Principal Software Engineer · PAREXEL
- 2010 – 2013Software Architect · PlumChoice
- 2000 – 2010Senior Software Engineer · SkillSoft
- 1996 – 2000Technician → Engineer · Raytheon Marine, Clearview
ContactOpen to VP roles
Let's talk.
I'm open to VP of Engineering roles at growth-stage companies, remote first, and to select contract work on mobile apps and agentic AI.
- kris@kristoferpelchat.com