Joel Lawler · Director of Engineering
Professional summary
Director-level engineering leader with 20+ years building and scaling mission-critical platforms in regulated financial and healthcare domains. Set vision and hired full stack and backend teams that delivered high-scale systems—from card-related data platforms and loan/valuation engines to HIPAA/SOC2-compliant SaaS—while partnering with product, risk, legal, and compliance. Proven track record driving operational excellence, robust development lifecycles, and platform investments that grow and scale business outcomes.
I'm actively seeking my next Director of Engineering or senior technical leadership role.
20+ yearsDirector-levelLed teams of 60+ engineersFull stack · Backend · PlatformSOC 2 · HIPAA · GDPRAWS · Azure
Skills
Platform & engineering
Full stack, backend, scalable platform architecture, development lifecycle, CI/CD, GitOps, operational excellence
Card platformFull stack engineeringBackend systemsAWSAzureNode.jsReactC#.NET CoreSQL ServerPostgreSQLCI/CDGitOpsSOC 2HIPAAGDPR
Leadership & outcomes
Setting team visionHiring and retaining full stack engineersGrowing engineering talentCross-functional partnershipInfluencing product and business leadershipDriving key business outcomesBudget and resource allocation
Domain & compliance
Financial productsRegulated systemsSOC 2HIPAAGDPRRiskLegal and complianceData integrityLedgering and accounting-adjacent systems
Experience
Director of Engineering — Libra Solutions
Remote · Nov 2025 – Feb 2026
- Reorganized a 60+ engineering team into pods; reduced meeting time by 75% and increased productivity by 30%.
- Architected a comprehensive transition plan from monolithic to microservices ecosystem, mapping domain-driven service boundaries and data migration strategies to improve system fault tolerance and modularity.
- Aligned engineering strategy with executive expectations on timeline, scope, and resourcing in a compliance-heavy environment, establishing clarity for cross-functional partners in legal and operations.
Associate Director of Engineering — IDEXX
Franklin, TN · Sept 2024 – Nov 2025
- Set technical direction and led a globally distributed full stack engineering team; drove code quality through architecture design sessions, CI/CD and GitOps best practices, and agile delivery, increasing release predictability and fostering a culture of operational excellence.
- Architected pet subscription service incorporating Stripe payment system and home delivery.
- Owned end-to-end technical integration of acquired startups: aligned engineering workflows, systems, and data architecture through cross-functional workshops with Product and Operations, reducing merger timeline and ensuring seamless consolidation of development lifecycles, toolchains, and GitOps workflows.
- Built and ran the organization's SOC 2 compliance program—developed security controls, maintained audit-ready documentation, and coordinated with external auditors—enabling continued scale while meeting rigorous data protection and risk standards.
- Deployed advanced cloud security on Azure (IAM, encryption in transit/at rest, org-wide MFA), mitigating security risk and supporting compliance requirements for product expansion and platform scale.
- Managed engineering budget planning and resource allocation; forecast staffing needs and monitored spend-to-deliverable metrics to deliver on-time feature releases and maximize ROI for business leadership.
Director of Engineering — Freightwise
Nashville, TN · June 2023 – Sept 2024
- Led team that built a generative AI platform on AWS Bedrock, using RAG over large PostgreSQL datasets to make invoice data researchable for senior leadership.
- Architected a system using Dremio and AWS S3 that reduced report generation from 3+ hours to seconds.
- Drove career development for direct reports through structured 1:1s, setting clear goals and growing talent to support team and business outcomes.
Software Engineering Manager — Thriveworks
Nashville, TN · June 2022 – June 2023
- Led end-to-end delivery of a HIPAA-compliant JavaScript SaaS application on AWS; drove compliance, security, and user engagement for a regulated, patient-facing product used at scale.
- Managed a distributed team of 20 full stack engineers across multiple time zones; grew talent through mentorship and strategic resource allocation and retained key contributors through clear vision and career development.
- Built an internal dashboard aggregating Jira and GitHub data; reduced reporting time and delivered actionable KPIs for product and leadership, enabling data-driven decisions across engineering and business.
Director of Engineering — Kroll
New York, NY · Aug 2019 – June 2022
- Set vision and led a globally distributed team to architect and deliver a GDPR-compliant generative AI research platform for private equity valuation and risk assessment; ensured data privacy and regulatory adherence while scaling the platform for high-volume, financial use cases.
- Drove cloud-native SaaS delivery across multiple regions using Azure deployment pipelines and infrastructure automation; reduced time-to-market and increased operational efficiency for mission-critical financial workflows.
- Built scalable C# API microservices, Angular front ends, and SQL Server backends; established rigorous peer review and automated testing to improve system reliability and support long-term platform scale and eclectic use cases.
- Partnered with product, analytics, legal, and compliance on requirements, risk controls, and release strategy; influenced roadmap and balanced product expansion with platform investments.
Earlier: Waller (8 yr), Latimore Black, Psychiatric Solutions, Bradley Arant. Full history in resume PDF.
Volunteer Experience
Nashville Software School
Mock interviews, capstone reviews, internship support.
NashJS (Nashville JavaScript User Group)
Technical presentations, group discussions, community facilitation.
Education
Judson University — Bachelor of Arts, Liberal Arts