Experienced technology leader, entrepreneur and CTO. Focusing on small & medium sized companies. Significant experience optimizing processes, helping to build the technology they need. I'm a starter who can take a company from nothing to scale. Specialities include execution & development, process improvement, strategic direction and mentoring / team building.

Director of Software Engineering @ From August 2015 to Present (5 months) Greater Chicago AreaFounder @ The Chicago CTO Forum is a private network of software executives that who exchange ideas, share experiences, and help each other when needed. It's a peer group for executives who find themselves in the position of CTO w/o the normal support system. From April 2013 to Present (2 years 9 months) Author / Speaker @ TALKS: My Biggest Career Mistakes - DevBoot Camp April 2015 Salary & Compensation Negotiations - DevBoot Camp March 2015 Salary & Compensation Negotiations - DevBoot Camp October 2014 Salary & Equity Negotiations - GirlDevelopIt September 2014 Why our industry sucks - DevBook Camp August 2014 How to Hire a CTO - Tech In Motion June 2014 Salary & Compensation Negotiations - DevBoot Camp May 2014 Artist vs. ? - DevBoot Camp January 2014 Why The Hell Are You Asking For Permission? - Ignite Chicago November 2012 Drupal 7 & The Semantic Web - Chicago Drupal Meetup October 2010 Killing a Product: The Murder of SEO Grader - Chicago Lean Startup Circle June 2010 Trimming the Fat: A Intro to Lean Software Development - Chicago ACM June 2010 A/B Testing On A Budget - Chicago Lean Startup Circle January 2010 Semantic Web: Past, Present & Future November 2009 Semantic Mashups - Chicago Semantic Web Group July 2009 Semantic Web Overview - Chicago Semantic Web Group Jan 2009 Domain Specific Languages - Chicago ACM Oct 2006 PUBLICATIONS: Parallel Metaheuristics - Book Review - Distributed Systems Online July 2008 Domain Specific Languages & DSL Workbench - Dr. Dobbs Journal April 2006 Dependency Injection - MSDN Sept 2005 Service Oriented Architecture - Code Magazine May/June 2005 Software Factories: Refactoring an Industry - TheServerSide.NET March 2005 Unit Testing Overview - Code Magazine Nov/Dec 2004 From November 2004 to Present (11 years 2 months) Mentor @ From July 2015 to December 2015 (6 months) Founder / CTO @ CTO and founder of an ecommerce company focusing on selling Durable Medical Equipment (DME) directly to Age In Place consumers. Using a sophisticated recommendation engine, we zero in on the right products for each consumer, not just a general product category. As CTO, built the entire platform, engine & operations infrastructure. Built as a responsive website, we utilized the latest technology for responsive design & delivery. Our engine was built using Python while harnessing various statistic modules. Brought on 3 developers as well as contractors to augment design, development and ops capabilities. As a founder, worked on management team surrounding all aspects of company strategy & direction. This includes direction & strategy on sales, marketing and operations. Worked on identifying potential clients, partnerships and other revenue models. Worked with suppliers, wholesalers and distributors to assemble our supply chain, allowing us to handle all of the logistics for ordering, shipping and supporting physical products. From July 2014 to August 2015 (1 year 2 months) CTO / Owner @ Part owner of company & first CTO, arranged for complete revamp of internal technology strategy. Helped expand company footprint to national audience. Managed all aspects of content strategy, marketing automation & SaaS service offering. From February 2013 to April 2015 (2 years 3 months) Greater Chicago AreaAdvisor @ From June 2014 to December 2014 (7 months) Greater Chicago AreaCTO @ Spartz is a consumer product company that has brought science to creating viral products. We use our technological advantages to attack consumer markets by harnessing software products lines & economies of scope. We target 13-34 consumers using mobile & web technologies. As the first CTO, I was responsible for all areas of delivery & execution include: Data Science, Software Development, DevOps and iteration management. I've brought a completely revamped technology strategy to Spartz, including shrinking development time of new products from 6 weeks to 4 hours. Managed a team of 25 people, representing over 70% of the company that reported directly to me. I groomed 3 Sr team members into lead & director level positions. Helped Spartz raise over $8 million dollars during its Series A, personally growing the company 60% during our investment growth period. Grew & evolved the business strategy as well as growing the product portfolio to include: - 40 High Traffic Web Sites - 35 Mobile Applications Example of various programs implemented as part of my tenure: - Spartz Scholars - Employee led discussions & presentations around various topics. Used to build public speaking & knowledge Sharing. - Various Book Clubs - Technical & Non-Technical. - OSS & Meetup Community Outreach From July 2012 to June 2014 (2 years) Greater Chicago AreaTechnology Head - Air National Guard / GoANG.com @ While consulting with Roundarch/Isobar, I was the technology head responsible for all technology implementations for Air National Guard / GoAng.com including: 1) Management, implementation and development of www.goang.com as global marketing site for the Air National Guard. 2) Global logistics, reporting platform & online directory as point of entry for all recruiters worldwide, covering over 150 bases globally. 3) Salesforce based recruiting platform covering global lead processing & management. Covering several hundred thousand leads a year, this platform was once one of the largest Salesforce installations at the time. Grew & managed the technology team as it increased from 3 developers to over 25 at it's peak. This includes full stack web engineers, flash based developers & data architects. From March 2009 to July 2012 (3 years 5 months) Greater Chicago AreaConsulting CTO @ Consulting CTO, working primarily with small & medium sized companies across the country. Primarily handling 1-2 clients at a time, I helped with 4 of the primary responsibilities of a CTO: 1) Act as technology executive for the purposes of fundraising. This could include 2) Help build, assess & improve existing internal teams & processes. 3) Manage the relationship between internal executive team & outsourced technology vendors. 4) Aid in the mentoring & guidance of existing sr. team members ( Dir, VP or CTO level ) Helps control technical strategy & direction of early to late state companies. Facilitates exploration and construction of primary products & services, including prototypes and betas. Includes managing technology teams, controlling 3rd party initiatives and providing as needed development and architecture help. Utilizes lean & agile software development ideologies, while also specializing in bringing products to market early and iteratively finding & researching sustainable business models. From October 2008 to July 2012 (3 years 10 months) Greater Chicago AreaFounding Moderator - Chicago Chapter @ Founder of Chicago chapter. Grew membership organically from 0 to over 1000 people in just under two years. From June 2010 to May 2012 (2 years) CTO @ CTO for first year of existence. Responsible for transition from consumer facing recommendation site (Koaladeal) to service oriented recommendation platform ( SimpleRelevance). Migrated original monolith application to SOA focused architecture to facilitate transition into new business areas and opportunities. Hired first development team, including data scientists and designers. From February 2011 to January 2012 (1 year) Organizer @ Ran group for 3 years. Grew membership to over 200 members. Covering all topics regarding semantics. Hosted dozens of international speakers for talks. Member of larger collation of over 3 dozen semantic groups worldwide. From November 2008 to October 2011 (3 years) Co-Founder @ Curator & founder of co-working space. From October 2010 to March 2011 (6 months) Co-Founder / Organizer @ Speaker, organizer & MC for group. Grew group to over 1000+ active members. From August 2009 to December 2010 (1 year 5 months) Trustee @ One of the original trustees to ScaleWell, we provide small-seed, no strings attached funding and support for new entrepreneurs. From January 2010 to October 2010 (10 months) Writer @ Semantic Web & Linked Data Blogger covering topics such as Microformats & Semantic Data Storage / RDF. From April 2008 to September 2009 (1 year 6 months) Senior Engineer @ While reporting directly to the CTO, led the implementation of agile processes, using SCRUM for project management and XP for engineering and delivery. Introduced daily scrums to engineering team. Led yearly retrospectives for team and company reviews. Lead contact for several 3rd party vendors and partners. Responsible for external requirements gathering and 3rd party integration. Added code coverage, unit & integration tests and CI to code base. Implemented robust change management process for production deployment. SaaS company in the asset tracking industry. Product line was written in ASP.NET, with a supporting mobile app written in AppForge Environment. Responsible for development and maintenance of the flagship ASP.NET product, as well as new development of rental calculation and reporting infrastructure. Built custom REST based web services framework for 3rd party integration. Led implementation & migration to .NET 3.5, ASP.NET 3.5 and MS AJAX. From May 2006 to September 2008 (2 years 5 months) Lead Engineer @ Lead implementation of SOA architecture for integration of supply chain partners such as DHL, Topflite and FexEx. Mobitrac was acquired by Descartes in 2006. From March 2006 to May 2006 (3 months) Greater Chicago AreaSr. Lead @ Responsible for the mentoring and training of several junior developers, as well as being the day to day technical lead and project architect. Participated in the architecture and development of an initial SOA implementation for a global corporation. This spike would be the basis of an SOA architectural assessment to determine the viability of utilizing an SOA architectural style throughout the rewrite of its marquee medical system product. Also provided guidance and construction support for a EAI product implementation to be used to integrate with SAP, with the plan to use the product as part of a larger SOA implementation. Handled all aspects of delivery, including requirements gathering, prescribing architecture, constructions, and testing. From July 2005 to March 2006 (9 months) Head of Special Projects @ Led project scope definition, requirements analysis, and lead technical architecture creation for several projects. Regularly reported to project stakeholders, including senior executive teams. Designed and developed several key pieces of company infrastructure. Defined and estimated scope and delivery cycles for product development, which included presenting requirements and project scope to board comprised of representatives from parent companies. Led several technical assessments in preparation for major rewrite initiatives. From July 2004 to August 2005 (1 year 2 months) Engineering Lead @ While reporting directly to the CTO, responsibilities included leading migration to .NET throughout the entire company. Spearheaded adoption of agile processes, including extreme programming ( XP ). Performed various project & product management responsibilities, including scoping versions, managing requirements, and defining architectural vision. Developed web service management platform for application construction. Platform utilized SOAP, WSDL, XML, and .NET Web Services, as well as various WS-* specs, including WS-Attachments & DIME. Technical interviewer for new members to team, including full time employees & consultants. Responsible for mentoring other developers in various aspects of software engineering, including design techniques and .NET knowledge Evaluated and made recommendations for various tools & processes to be used throughout the engineering team. This includes 3rd party vendor selection and SDLC process development. From December 2002 to July 2004 (1 year 8 months) Software Consultant @ Responsible for mentoring and training an entire development team in software concepts, ranging from OOP, .NET Framework, XML, and the software development process. Responsibilities and tasks included : • Instituted new, agile development process for all software development. • Organized team based collaboration with MS Project and MS Project Server. • Responsible for collaborating between the project manager, customers, and the team for effective and efficient software development. • Use UML for all software design documentation and diagramming. • Taught training program for the development team. Topics discussed in detail include: .NET Framework, Object-Oriented Programming, Customer interaction, and utilizing a software development process. • Organized daily stand up meetings between project manager and development team. Part of a team that ported 40 web applications from a ASP and Cold Fusion architecture to a J2EE architecture. All applications utilized the Netscape iPlanet suite of applications, including iPlanet Portal Server and Application Server. Individually responsible for re-writing 15 sites to use the new interwoven content management system. Extensive experience with all levels of content creation in TeamSite 5.5 on a UNIX Solaris platform. This includes DataDeploy, OpenDeploy and Presentation Template creation. Designed and development of all interactive portions of 15 of the web sites. All portions were written using a combination of JSP and tag libraries. From January 2002 to December 2002 (1 year) Lead Engineer @ Maintained primary product as well as 7 utility products, filling the role as the lead developer of the company, along with a company architect, for overall vision and direction. Ported the company’s web site from a Cold Fusion infrastructure to an ASP/COM based one. Product written in Visual Basic 6.0, but research was made for a .NET/mobile port of the applications. All other utilities were written in VB 6.0, including report generation and database administration. N-tier design principles were utilized within the product to provide a scaleable solution. Source control and build automation were accomplished using Microsoft SourceSafe and Ant. Extreme Programming was used to write and maintain all of the software. Design incorporated aggressive use of object-oriented concepts frameworks and patterns. Installed, managed, and administered two Windows servers, one NT and one 2000. Supporting several Windows 9x and 2000 clients. Setup Visual Source Safe for source code control. Installed, configured, and maintained hardware for a DSL connection. Configured remote access servers for dial-in access to network as well as a secure wireless network for in-office communication. From August 2000 to April 2002 (1 year 9 months) Systems Engineer @ Part of a core team that developed an Accelerated Training Program for an aggressive crash course on BEA Weblogic 6.0 for internal use. Program was a 2-day program that utilized all aspects of development and testing with both lectures and lab exercises. Topics included clustering and session replication. While deployed as a consultant to a company in the banking industry, worked with the Unix Systems Team to install, configure, and tune over 30 Weblogic/iPlanet/Java applications in system test, user acceptance, and production environments running Solaris 2.6. Streamlined the setup and administration of over 15 J2EE enterprise web applications. Applications were deployed in user acceptance and production environments utilizing clustering for front-end and back-end implementation. Involved in the maintenance and design of an enterprise level, object-oriented framework written in Java. This framework is utilized within over 25 enterprise applications, across many companies. Made inroads to legitimatize Extreme Programming as a viable alternative to the Rational Unified Process, including starting up an event called OpenHaus, with topic was the viability of Extreme Programming. Managed a mixed Solaris and Windows NT Server network, supporting several dozen NT, Windows 9x, and MacOS clients. Implemented Apache Server for web site hosting, and Sendmail for e-mail exchange. Maintained and administered router, CSU/DSU, and firewall hardware for T1 Internet connection. Administered and configured Checkpoint Firewall/1 on Solaris 2.6 for Internet security. Worked with BEA Systems upon acquisition of Bauhaus Technologies to migrate entire company infrastructure into BEA Systems standard infrastructure. From June 2000 to November 2001 (1 year 6 months)

BS @ University of Illinois at Chicago From 2001 to 2008 Bachelor of Science (B.S.) @ Aurora University From 1999 to 2001 Griffin Caprio is skilled in: Document Management, Analytics, Lean Software Development, Finance, Agile Methodologies, Enterprise Architecture, Software Development, Start-ups, .NET, Scrum, XML, Web Applications, SDLC, SOA, SaaS