Joel Lawler
Professional summary
Executive-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 driven to accelerate your company’s growth and profitability.
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
Independent Lead Software Engineer / Architect — Self-Employed (Pre-Funded Startups)
Remote · 2026 – Present
- Own end-to-end architecture and implementation of greenfield SaaS platforms for pre-funded startups, from requirements discovery and domain modeling through deployment, observability, and production support.
- Partner directly with founders and billing operations leads to design billing, invoicing, and revenue recognition workflows that meet audit, compliance, and reporting needs.
- Design and build full stack applications using React/TypeScript front ends, API-driven back ends, and PostgreSQL, with a focus on line-item detail, historical reconciliation, and clear adjustment/audit trails.
- Extensively integrate Stripe for billing and payments, including subscription management, one-time invoices, metered/usage-based billing, webhook processing, dunning flows, and reconciliation with internal ledgers and external accounting tools.
- Implement CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure automation, and logging/monitoring to ensure stable, secure user experiences in lean, startup-style environments.
- Architect and train AI agents tailored to startup needs, including internal automation (ops, billing, reporting) and external use cases (customer support, self-service workflows), ensuring they integrate cleanly with core billing and invoicing systems.
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.
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