Executive Summary

I have been building innovative SaaS products since before the term SaaS was popularized. I spent the first half of my career at MessageLabs, a secure cloud messaging provider. I joined as employee #2, and helped grow the company to ~600 people, before it was acquired by Symantec for $695 million.

Since then I have split my time between product-oriented businesses and professional services. Right now, I run the development (onshore and offshore), QA and InfoSec functions for Augmentt. Augmentt is the market-leading SaaS security platform, enablsing MSPs to deliver scalable managed security services for Microsoft and cloud apps. Before that I held a similar role at Avanti Software, a leading provider of Human Capital Management solutions. Before thati>, ran my own business for a couple of years, working as a technology consultant.

I get a ton of satisfaction from building high-performing, collaborative product engineering teams that own their process, and are focused on outcomes (rather than outputs). I believe that team culture is one of the greatest competitive advantages an organisation can have.

I have led a lot of projects over the past decade, and I have a delivery-oriented outlook - I love to turn great ideas into well-architected, robust, reliable products that solves real problems and deliver maximum customer value. I favour simple, elegant solutions over complex, sophisticated ones.

I have experience in multiple industry sectors, including healthcare, retail and financial services.

I code, but mostly for fun.

Personal Info

Name
Matt Cave
Home Town
Uxbridge, Canada
Email
m@ttcave.ca
Phone
+1 647 241-0313
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/mattcave/

Key Skills and Interest Areas

  • Agile software development
  • Product development
  • Professional services and consulting
  • Scalable architecture with a bias for cloud-native solutions
  • CI/CD and DevOps
  • Test automation
  • Audit and compliance (ISO, SOC)

Professional Experience

Sept 2022Current

Vice-President of Engineering — Augmentt Technology

  • Leading the Development, QA and InfoSec functions for an early-stage startup, building SaaS Security & Management tools for IT Managed Service Providers
    • Successfully delivered 100% of roadmap commitments on time, on budget
    • Increased product value (measured by average price per user) by 12x in 18 months
    • Scaled customer-base by 250% in a year, simultaneously reducing hosting costs by 45%
    • Reduced average Bug Triage time by 80%
    • Achieved SOC 2 Type II compliance and certification with zero findings (twice)
    • Increased SR&ED credits by 30%
    • Managed distributed Engineering team across 3 continents with zero undesirable attrition
    • Successfully delivered multiple projects via off-shore development partners and other contract resources
Aug 2020 to Aug 2022

Vice-President of Engineering — Avanti Software

  • Delivered complex migration to Microsoft Azure in first 6 months
  • Restructured development org to align Scrum teams to product modules, cutting developer ramp-up time in half and improving productivity by ~20%
  • Built out a cross-functional "Migration Squad" to transition all legacy on-premise clients to the cloud over a 12 month period, in partnership with head of Client Experience. In addition to radically simplifying Avanti's business, the project achieved greater than 2x ARR uplift.
  • Significantly improved our security posture through a program of penetration testing & remediation, least privilege access reviews and company education
  • Other achievements include:-
    • championing the use of cloud-native services and defining our “macro-service” architecture
    • maintaining <5% regrettable attrition during the 2020-21 pandemic
    • implementing a horizontally-scalable architecture for our database layer, that enables 10x the previous solution's scalability
    • leading the ongoing migration from single-tenant managed service to true multi-tenant SaaS platform
    • plus a lot of un-glamorous but essential work like delivering clean SOC audits, implementing formal Incident Management and Change Management processes, and defining Avanti's developer progression framework
June 2019 to Aug 2020

Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer — Good Major

  • Co-founded a digital marketing and product agency, focusing on the cannabis industry
  • Although my title was CTO, as a small startup my role spanned everything from sales, to solution design, to project management, to hands-on coding. I was also responsible for finance, tax, and legal.
  • Key projects in our first year included:-
    • a ground-up eCommerce build for a Canadian retail startup
    • a headless CMS-backed website build for a rapidly expanding wholesaler
    • development of a data-driven marketing strategy for a US-based microbiology company
March 2018 to May 2019

Group Technical Director — Rangle.io

  • Member of technical senior leadership team, jointly responsible for Rangle's technical strategy, reporting to CTO.
  • Directly managing multiple Technical Directors, as well as oversight of 40+ Developers and Architects, working on multiple Scrum teams, across multiple client consultancy engagements, in retail, healthcare and finance.
  • Coaching individuals and teams on topics such as scaling Agile practices, consulting skills and professional development.
  • Heavy focus on front-end Javascript (React, Redux, TypeScript, WebPack etc) and hybrid mobile apps (React Native) as well as CI/CD, Node middlewares and Cloud-native APIs and backends.
  • Key projects include the build of a complex ecosystem of medical device products for a European client, hiring the technical leadership team for Rangle's Amsterdam office, and leading the revitalization of Rangle's QA automation strategy.
December 2016 to March 2018

Vice President of Technology — Klick Health

  • Member of both business and craft senior leadership teams, reporting to CTO
  • Management and coaching of developers, QA, BAs, CRM Operations, and overall staff development
  • Building and nurturing relationships with our clients' IT delivery teams
  • Leading enterprise-wide omnichannel marketing implementations with large biopharma clients
  • Responsible for discovery and delivery of all technical work across the business group
September 2013 to December 2016

Technical Director — Klick Health

  • Provided technical direction on a variety of digital projects, ranging from website builds to mobile apps to email marketing campaigns to corporate intranets to eCommerce solutions, in an agency environment
  • Managed and coached a team of 20 front-end developers, back-end developers and QA staff
  • Provided oversight on a wide variety of technology stacks, including projects using C#/.Net, LAMP (incl various PHP frameworks), Node, and Cordova — and even some VR projects.
  • Subject matter expert on Agile development methodologies and tools
  • Ensured project managers are equipped to monitor project cost, risk, and timelines
  • Responsible for maintaining long-term, “big picture” plans for client systems, architectures and technical environment
  • Acted as the technical face of the business, in both a business development and post-sales context
May 2013 to July 2013

Consultant / Solution Architect — Proset Inc.

  • Prior to starting a new permanent role, I took on a short consulting and development project.
  • The project entailed the development of a prototype Slotting Toolkit for a retail merchandising provider, working with clients such as Canadian Tire, Home Depot and Princess Auto.
  • The toolkit allows a project leader to analyze a list of inventory, sort it via a choice of algorithms, and then automatically "slot" merchandise into the most appropriate warehouse locations.
  • Browser-based, using javascript, LocalStorage and jSPDF to output the final user-validated designs.
July 2010 to June 2012

Director of Technical Services — Symantec.Cloud

  • Accountable for the management of Symantec's global SaaS Email, Web and IM messaging platform
  • Led a team of 40 staff across 3 sites, split between network design, platform design, systems development, and software release management
  • Responsible for global sourcing strategy for colocation, bandwidth and professional services across 14 global data centres, and infrastructure totalling around 10,000 devices
  • Managing combined Capex and Opex budget of over $20mil
  • Introduced Scrum methodology to my development team
  • Scrum Product Owner for Symantec.Cloud monitoring and management tool suite (performance and uptime monitoring, software deployment, inventory/asset management etc)
  • Championed a significant organisational restructuring, spanning Operations, R&D and Product Management
  • Participated in successful ISO27001 certification programme

Recommendations

Matt has always impressed me with his ability to balance the concerns of people leadership, technology expertise, and achieving customer success. His well-developed business acumen allows him to quickly recognize client needs and achieve alignment on mission and goals. His insights into employee experiences and his technical expertise allow him to effectively engage with his teams on several levels. The efficiency with which Matt brings these strengths together makes for swift and effective action to be taken in every situation on which we have collaborated. I look forward to working with him again.
Dale Simpson
Digital Product Delivery Executive
Dale Simpson
I had the pleasure to work with Matt for over a year. During that time, he showed great leadership, mentorship, and instilled a sense of unity and trust within the team. I would recommend Matt for any position requiring great leadership skills.
Tom Grabowski
Director of Engineering at Irwin
Tom Grabowski

Education

Professional Qualifications
  • Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate
  • Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals
  • Shopify Partner - Product Fundamentals, Business Fundamentals, and Theme Development
  • Adobe Certified Expert - AEM
  • Certified Scrum Product Owner
  • ITIL® v3 Foundation
  • Linux Professionals Institute Level 1 Accreditation
  • Cisco Certified Network Associate
  • Microsoft Certified Professional
Academic Qualifications
  • BSc (Hons) Applied Computing, University of East Anglia