Senior PM, Workflows Platform - API-first, Temporal migration

Stephen Montoya

*******.*******@******.*** 312-***-****

PROFILE

I've spent my career building engineering teams from scratch, setting up playbooks, and figuring out how to get from chaos to clarity. I love solving big, messy problems, especially those involving organizational structure, streamlining delivery, and making life easier for engineers and the business. I've led global teams, built Development, QA, and SRE functions, and driven platform strategies that move the needle. At the end of the day, I care about outcomes: more stability, faster releases, and teams that are confident in the systems they run. If there’s a gap, I’ll find it. If there’s a better way, I’ll help us get there. It is my job to help teams maximize ROI on software, spot at-risk behaviors, and improve how work gets done. EXPERIENCE

Reveal Data Corp. E-discovery with AI solutions

Director of Engineering, Development, QA, and SRE; Chicago, IL — Aug 2021- Jul 2025 Led the Review and Processing Engineering Departments, comprising cross-functional teams of over 80 engineers across four countries, while overseeing the complete software development lifecycle and engineering roadmap. Combined expertise, provided technical leadership, and offered guidance on system architecture, design patterns, and technology selection. Designed and implemented using a Tiger Team strategy as an internal Center of Excellence model to drive consistency, leadership development, and reusable architecture patterns across engineering teams globally.

Developed Release Engineering playbooks and standards to unify our overlapping technologies into a single back-end solution, directing the front-end (APIs) to this new solution. Managed vendor contracts for critical platform tools, improving ROI and platform scalability. Picked the vendor(s), organized the Proof of Concept (POC), and negotiated pricing. Drove organizational restructuring after acquiring nine companies offering overlapping application solutions. Led the organizational structure changes and built our new culture. Discover Financial Services

Senior Engineering Manager, Site Reliability Engineering; Chicago, IL — Mar 2020 - Aug 2021 Managed a team of reliability engineers to oversee a distributed financial services platform built for high performance and low latency. Lead the Site Reliability Engineering culture. Develop an innovative roadmap to elevate SRE teams throughout all organizations. System reliability increased at various organizational levels by improving observability and automating solutions.

Led Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) teams and helped standardize service-level objectives

(SLOs), driving adoption of reliability-focused development practices across all organizations. Launched an office-hours-based knowledge-sharing model, increasing SRE adoption and improving issue resolution time.

Charles Schwab

Senior Manager, Software Applications Engineering, Chicago, IL — Feb 2019 - Mar 2020 Led a team of Reliability Engineers to manage a distributed Trading Platform for high performance and low latency.

Improved monitoring and observability tools and reduced issue detection time by 30%. Developed automated solutions for auto-recovery, troubleshooting, and data collection. Improvements in incident management and alerting aim to reduce Mean Time To Resolution

(MTTR) by 20%.

Epsilon (formerly Conversant Media)

Senior Manager, Site Reliability Engineering, Chicago, IL — Oct 2014 - Feb 2019 Successfully built the Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) department from the ground up. Developed innovative monitoring solutions with custom application monitoring tools and created a unified dashboard that integrated various monitoring systems. This initiative provided a single pane of glass for comprehensive visibility across our advertising stack, ensuring peak operational efficiency. We achieved this by utilizing open-source and in-house software, resulting in approximately $1M in annual savings on observability costs. Established the Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) department by designing its vision, operational framework, and team structure.

Implemented automation solutions and algorithms, improving the deployment strategy and reducing backouts and failed upgrades by 99%.

Microsoft Mobile Devices (formerly Nokia, Inc.)

Engineering Manager, Quality Assurance, Chicago, IL — Oct 2011 - Oct 2014 Managed multiple teams of engineers in Chicago and Bangalore to ensure the highest quality for the Xpress Browser used in S40 and Next Generation Cellular devices designed by Nokia/ Microsoft.

Made significant improvements in overall quality, reducing the hardening sprint from 12 weeks to 3-5 days.

AMK Services

Implementation Engineer / Sales Engineer, Noblesville, Indiana — Oct 2009 - Oct 2011 Led an engineering team focused on designing and installing high-availability telecommunications networks and data centers for first responders. Established a Software Development Life Cycle process model using Agile methodologies

(eXtreme), emphasizing iterative design techniques. Used the JAD (Joint Application Development) process to gather our requirements. This approach improved implementation for the customer and boosted productivity because we took the time to understand their processes and designed solutions that enhanced their performance by automating tasks when possible and reducing human error.

Served as a consultant for Harris Corporation, supporting P25 implementation projects and acting as a sales engineer for new product sales.

Motorola, Inc

Engineering Manager - VzW account team, Arlington Heights, IL — Jul 2007 - Feb 2009 Managed a system engineering team of 15 engineers to complete various software and hardware integrations, including adding voice and data carriers to the network. Assisted the customer in overseeing the project for new platform launches. Generated revenue to achieve a 55% sales margin goal by selling both traditional and non-traditional system engineering services. Enhanced the team's technical skills by redefining long-term technical roles to boost front-end engagement, leading to a significant decrease in work errors. Completed technical due diligence for two new product launches and integrated a new EVDO core network and Operations and Maintenance platforms. Through effective training, program management, and resource allocation, all tasks were completed with zero defects and no adverse impacts. Market Manager II - First Office Application Team, Arlington Heights, IL — Aug 2003 - Jul 2007 Engineering Manager overseeing the System Engineering Team of 12 engineers dedicated to testing new software and hardware for First Office Applications for Sprint PCS. Success was measured by the number of customer-identifiable defects found during testing in the customer's laboratories and initial field tests. Responsibilities included enhancing quality, efficiency, and managing budgets for travel and various Motorola test labs. Achieved a $1M annual reduction in travel costs by relocating the pre-launch lab from Fort Worth to Arlington Heights. Additionally, this move boosted employee morale—a notable intangible benefit. Improved efficiency and quality by redefining long-term technical and project management roles. Added a technical lead and a project manager to strengthen front-end planning and test readiness. As a result, defect rates decreased from 85 to fewer than 10, while efficiency increased by 30 to 40 percent with each release.

Market Manager I - Alltel Account Team, Arlington Heights, IL — Apr 2000 - Aug 2003 A new management position was created to enhance operations. Responsible for managing and leading a small engineering team to deploy and oversee new software in 100 markets across the country. Responsibilities included implementing ongoing operational improvements through design and process enhancements. Reduced capital costs of software distribution by developing and testing a remote software solution, saving approximately $5 million annually. Eliminated software distribution failures from 30% to zero by designing a new distribution process. This process became the model for future software deployments worldwide. Influenced the development of a new tool to automate manual steps in software deployment, decreasing the risk of human error. Increased the number of deployments from four per weekend to about 30, improving scheduling and lead times. Customer Support Engineer - Global, Arlington Heights, IL — Oct 1993 - Apr 2000 Part of an elite engineering team dedicated to recovering high-availability telecommunications networks that have malfunctioned. Worked with cross-functional teams to conduct root cause analysis. This high-profile position offered an opportunity to demonstrate leadership, technical, and collaboration skills.

EDUCATION

University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ — Bachelor of Science (BS), Information Technology, 2010-2013

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