Jason Fraley

I helped to grow the Development organization to nearly 125 people, started the Quality Assurance division and developed the SDLC. I lead multiple major engineering efforts delivering teams, systems and platforms that were key to Kin's explosive growth in a new insuretech vertical.

Kin Insurance is a groundbreaking insurtech company headquartered in Chicago IL

• Responsible for creating architecture for several of Kin's core systems, led the team to successful delivery and integration of these systems. Built a technology vision roadmap to take Kin into a scaleable, cost-effective and secure future.
• Staffed, launched and led the devops / SRE organization, which then delivered a world-class platform for Kin's infrastructure.
• Architected and built a next-level infrastructure as code platform, fully automated pipelines on top of fully immutable infrastructure.
• Developed and adapted a lean/agile software development lifecycle framework that has enabled Kin to scale the engineering team to nearly 10x its size in less then 3 years.
• Acting as Kin's CISO performing all information security leadership duties including the development of a full GRC program, Risk matrix, infosec operating model.
• Staffed and built an infosec team from the ground up, established multiple enterprise wide programs ensuring a scalable secure environment for Kin.
• Staffed and led a world class IT team, and built a compute environment for the user-base that has been key to the nearly 10x growth of the company.
• Key focus on delivering value to the core business stakeholders, empowering Kin's teams to work together to lead the insuretech industry.
• Led multiple software engineering teams with unprecedented efficiency that shipped industry changing software and systems.

Reporting to the CTO, I grew the Development and Quality Assurance divisions from under 20 to over 60 people. I built a lean engineering organization from the ground up, focused on high-quality, extremely scalable software platforms that were instrumental in propelling KnowBe4 to a billion dollar valuation in the top right corner of the Gartner Magic Quadrant. Working for a company in the security space I recognized that KB4 had a large target on its back from a security standpoint, as a result staying one step ahead of the latest security threats and vulnerabilities was always top-of-mind.

KnowBe4 is the Gartner Magic Quadrant leader in the Security Awareness Training space.

• Responsible for the growth and leadership of a large engineering team, including a range of developers and quality assurance engineers. I accomplished this through evangelism, sponsorship, and outreach across technology communities.
• Worked hand in hand with the CTO to craft a secure, scalable, and sustainable SaaS platform stack leveraging many of the AWS technologies that are the backbone of KnowBe4's core business.
• Partnered with the CISO to overhaul the SDLC and proactively bring the engineering organization into compliant ready state for its first SOC2 audit. This initiative also included significant parallel efforts around GDPR, CCPA, and PCI compliance efforts
• Led initiative to modernize and radically increase the accuracy and resolution of BI insights from the engineering organization, thus enabling the Finance and Growth teams to position KnowBe4 for IPO.
• Introduced and cultivated an inspired development methodology and CI/CD strategy, enabling my teams to deliver the highest quality software products and postion KnowBe4 as the class leader in our space.
• Assembled and led a team to envision, plan, build, and ship a SaaS software platform from the ground up to public launch in six months. This platform (PhishER) has already earned revenues approaching $5M in less than a year and contributes heavily to overall MRR.
• Planned and led multiple project teams through major technical debt initiatives, all with radical improvements to measured performance and throughput metrics.
• Created and Established OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) for the Engineering Division, helping to further manage and drive hypergrowth.
• Led the engineering effort to enable the finance team to become aligned with Sarbanes Oxley requirements and best practices.
• Developed and established a common set of methodologies across all development teams, including Ruby, Golang, PHP, .NET, Java, and Python, unifying all the teams and standardizing QA processes across the organization.
• Launched and directed the effort to launch and build out a comprehensive QA automation effort using a mixture of Selenium and Ranorex.

As the CTO and member of the executive leadership team, I led the large-scale re-hosting and consolidation effort of all Information Technology systems. Architected and implemented the rapid development and migration of a new CMS, order management system, and pricing engine. Complete overhaul of information security from top-to-bottom that unified many disparate systems and brought the organization into compliance with PCI, GDPR and other efforts to secure PII exposure vectors. Oversaw all the technology aspects of the merger with 1800PackRat.

ZippyShell - 1800PackRat is the 2nd largest moving and storage company in the US servicing well over 300 million customers annually

• Responsible for the architecture, integration, and implementation of salesforce.com CRM system including integration with Rails app via Heroku Connect DB backend and other AWS hosted systems.
• Designed, developed, and implemented replacement CPS (pricing engine) and pricing algorithms for freight support systems and front-end sales systems, all built on Rails/Heroku stack.
• Led the initiative to bring in a security pen-testing company, perform audits, and quickly update and path systems where potential vectors were uncovered.
• Built out state-of-the-art call center with maximum redundancy, security, and scalability built into every layer, This enabled the sucessfull rollout of a Google Chrome desktop and Windows hybrid architecture.
• Responsible for and creation of multi-million dollar annual OPEX and CAPEX IT budgets. Worked with a non-technical finance department to align the business with SOX best practices.
• Implemented comprehensive CM systems and process, from test-first development practices to automated CI and deployment, leveraging Capybara ,Travis, Heroku Pipeline, and on-demand Docker and AWS instances complete with SCM, Slack integration and automated reporting and history tracking.
• Led agile and effective development, devops, and helpdesk teams to support growth and reliability.
• Architected and led the development effort to migrate and consolidate onto a modern secure payment platform and credit card processor and built out payment workflows in Rails application integrated into Quickbooks. This allowed us to engage a QSA and successfully pass a PCI audit.
• Overhauled and rebuilt accounting systems and corporate-wide File/Print systems including migration into a fully redundant AWS stack, leveraging load balancers, Docker/Kubernetes, clustering and fully automated provisioning following the IaaS model.
• Led migration effort to modern VOIP telephony system including redundant telco links and automated IVR testing suite, deploying custom Ruby/Twilio API integration.

Launched a new consulting company in 2013 focused on software development and technology and security consulting. Built a large local and national client base and provided excellent service and delivered premium software products and systems to our clients.

Ahoy Consulting is a software development and information technology and engineering systems consultancy

• Full product lifecycle production/development of dozens of application and backend systems for local and national clients built on platforms using PHP, Golang, Ruby on Rails, C/Obj-C, among others.
• Produced, developed, and launched multiple iOS and Android mobile apps into the marketplaces, ranging from simple recipe apps written in web frameworks like Cordova, Ionic, and PhoneGap to data collection kiosk-style apps to games and social media apps across a wide range of Native Obj-C/Swift and Java and hybrid application frameworks.
• Built and integrated with a wide range of custom e-commerce configurations spanning from simple crowdsourcing collection systems and t-shirt sales to sophisticated membership, product sales systems and complex accounting systems tied into popular commercial accounting packages using XML/SOAP and REST APIs done mostly with Ruby.
• Systems development and integration expertise in claim processing and medical billing, electronic document generation and lifecycle oversight, inventory management, and varying types of logistics and fulfillment scenarios working with HIPPA, HETS, CMS and a wide range of other EDIs in the medical data-interchange space. Developed a Ruby library for communicating with ANSI X12 interface.
• Workflow and process optimization, through the development of scratch-built ruby modules and integration into many popular CRM and workflow systems like salesforce.com and Microsoft dynamics.
• Project management, auditing, code review, and technology and systems assessments for a diverse set of clients covering scenarios like pre-IPO and pre-acquisition due diligence and PCI/HIPPA compliance.
• Engineering life-cycle testing, performance tuning, and production streamlining of Ruby applications.
• Product development, marketing and deployment strategies, market penetration, and user adoption.
• Infrastructure architecture/design, implementation, monitoring, and management of a large base of installed AWS technologies including: EC2, ELB, EBS, S3, Cloud Front, Route 53, RDS, and Lambda,
• Information security architecture/design and deployment, monitoring, and management.

Led the entire development staff company-wide of Ruby and PHP developers to build out many successful Ruby applications and mobile apps.

• Migrated all production and staging systems to Chef systems integration framework and built out a complete ruby-based DSL for managing systems hosted across multiple AWS availability zones with a focus on system security and scalability.
• Built suite of performance benchmark and stress-testing tools leveraging Selenium, Rails/Rspec and a complete reporting and monitoring application built on Rails.
• Development of geospatial data warehouse using a hybrid MongoDB/Postgres/PostGIS data layer under a Rails application spanning hundreds of terabytes of geo-catalogued data.
• Development of Rails/Golang-based subscription and data inventory management system, tracking and versioning digital assets, and delivery logistics workflow with AWS S3, Glacier, and CloudFront.
• Ruby/Rails development on several other customer-facing SaaS applications.
• Responsible for corporate security, internal, external networks and secops best practices. Spatial often dealt with TSC required information, so security was always layered and strict protocols were always enforced.
• Architecture, development and deployment of next-gen distributed application framework and database servers in multi-region fully-redundant AWS cloud environment leveraging capistranio, chef, along with development of internal tools using the AWS API.
• Migration to completely re-written e-commerce backend, integrating multiple software offerings into a unified revenue collection and accounting system, with a focus on PCI compliance and security.
• Overhauled/replaced internal network and security systems including firewall, VPN, and site-to-site replication along with a VPC network to various secure AWS availability zones.

Responsible for company-wide team of pre/post sales systems engineers, resource allocation, training and vendor certification. Increased revenue and nearly tripled the business division. Responsible for selecting best-of-breed technologies in the IT space, establishing and building partnerships with these hardware / software manufacturers, and developing a value-proposition and go to market strategy.

GCA is a national VAR (value-added reseller) with 7 locations in the US.

• Report directly to CEO as trusted member of executive leadership team influencing focus on core business competencies and future direction.
• Created customer product and service delivery model including installation and implementation methodologies, ensuring customer satisfaction and repeat business.
• Manage technical support team responsible for large demanding customer base as well as company-wide national IT support and infrastructure systems.
• Successfully developed and deployed configuration management procedures using Github, disaster recovery via AWS ECS image sync, information security and numerous other improvements for internal IT systems spanning a wide range of other technologies.
• Spearheaded large migration to AWS cloud based services and virtual desktop, reducing budget impact and shifting costs from CAPEX to OPEX.
• Developed numerous ground breaking marketing strategies using social media and other web 2.0 technologies directly targeting technical customer base.
• Developed plan to move ailing training division back into profitability leveraging multiple open-source technologies and engaging the local technical community.
• Created major process improvement initiative to drastically increase re-useability of code and documentation efforts using CRM and automated testing tools Selenium and Capybara.
• Re-design and implementation of billing, hard and soft asset deployment tracking, and accounting.
• Design and implementation of SugarCRM implementation an integration into existing CRM systems and internal tools using PHP and early version of Ruby on Rails.
• Developed new business plan, revenue models and extensive market research for outsourced IaaS/PaaS division based on emerging efficiencies of VMware and Amazon AWS technologies.

Member of local post-sales support team on all Sun products for customers in the west central Florida region. Local service advocate for key Sun customers. Senior level Sun hardware and software engineer.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. ( now Oracle ) is a company selling computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services.

• Responsible for local service level agreement delivery for Sun customers.
• Managed customer support expectations ensuring systems availability while reducing time-to resolution efforts.
• Created a positive view of service efforts creating a fertile environment for the sales team to increase Sun footprint.
• Provided real-time feedback to the sales team of “conditions on the front” to arm them with information to ensure successful sales strategies.
• Responsible for facilitating customer relationships with support and providing advice and assistance to internal Sun employees on diverse customer situations and escalated issues.
• Developed automated process for generating customer report information, leveraging modified internal tools written in C and Perl.
• Numerous root-cause analysis and advanced troubleshooting success stories.
• Regional leader in advanced storage systems deployment and training.

Co-founder of a high-tech startup, and helped to develop groundbreaking interactive television technology. Helped craft a unified vision of application and user-interface, marketing strategies and strategic company wide vision. Directed development, integration, architecture, and deployment.

• Member of executive staff, formulated emerging strategy and market integration.
• Responsible for company-wide IT infrastructure and cable system integration and leading the DevOps team.
• Architected hardware and software development environment for set-top and back-end developer staff including source code repository systems and release and deployment strategies.
• Involved in contract negotiation and technology partner relations.
• Helped to build early B2B e-commerce system with direct integration into accounting system leveraging Java and early enterprise application frameworks.

Rapidly rose through the ranks at GTEDS with increasing responsibility, from programmer and systems administrator to team lead and department manager. Worked on many extremely high-visibility projects and was actively involved with planning and contributed to their ultimate success.

GTE Corporation (now Verizon) was the largest of the "independent" US telephone companies during the days of the Bell System.

• Department manager responsible for development environment and all test-dev environments under the AWAS and AAIS project teams including one of the largest at the time installation of Sun E10K enterprise server platforms.
• Key player responsible for the hardware and software architecture during the development phase of AAIS which is now a core critical business system for Verizon.
• Senior technical team lead for the field trial of high-visibility commercial product. Spent 5 months in Germany leading the integration and operation of POC systems with legacy German telephone systems.
• Instrumental work done around UNIX system performance tuning and data migration from legacy mainframe application to UNIX based open system.
• Worked directly with Sun Microsystems engineers to tune Solaris kernel specifically around RAM based filesystems and maximizing performance and IO throughput.
• Senior lead engineer responsible for the pre-production roll-out of the AAIS system nationwide resulting in a massive CAPEX to OPEX shift and overall cost reduction.
• Software development on numerous projects using C, C++, Java including contributions to many open-source GNU tools.
• Oracle, Informix, and DB2 database administrator duties including production and development migrations index architecture and triggers and backup and recovery.
• Sun Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, and IBM AIX system administration on nearly 200 unix systems, unified patch and deployment methodology and established configuration management procedures and documentation.
• Installed and maintained early EMC disk based storage for Open Systems ( AIX/Solaris ), working directly with engineering teams to troubleshoot and performance optimize filesystem access on typically mainframe based LUN architecture.

Hired to start new business ventures into white-box PC sales and reseller program development. Built solid customer base around IT consulting and network/systems infrastructure. Successfully deployed numerous IT systems to local small businesses.

• Launched a white-box OEM PC division from zero to a cash-flow positive division in under six months.
• Established new vendor partnerships and grew the systems reseller division to +4x revenue numbers.
• Launched company's first website and e-commerce system, with hooks into supply-chain and order fulfillment done mostly with C and Perl.
• Led engineering consulting division installing and supporting numerous local SMB business networks across a wide base including Novell/Netware, Microsoft Windows, IBM Mainframes S/390 and R/390 SCO UNIX and Sun Microsystems.
• Supported Mainframe developers leveraging R/390 technologies in early Y2K testing and software development efforts.

Worked as a consultant for various local companies developing software and providing systems and software consulting services on a wide variety of systems including Tandem and PDP-11, Windows, UNIX and early adopter of Linux.

Ran a small ISP out of my garage providing dial-up internet access to the neighborhood thru a ISDN line