Allstacks has experienced tremendous growth over the last 12+ months. We’re excited to announce that Jamie Howard is joining the team as VP of Engineering to champion that growth and help scale a high-performing engineering team that continues to deliver repeatable, predictable, and scalable results.

Because Jamie identifies with our mission, his impact will go well beyond his work at Allstacks as he will help other leaders build trust and confidence in their software organizations. He has always been fascinated by the industry’s attempts to measure engineering. That curiosity, paired with his passion for building great engineering environments, made him the ideal candidate to lead our engineering team at Allstacks.

As “customer zero,” Jamie and his team will be shaping how Allstacks evolves to deliver on the promise of building great engineering teams that are the heartbeat of the modern technology organization.

Jamie shipped his first code at Icarus Studios as part of the Alpha Dev Team and then moved to Qualcomm to build EDA software for the Snapdragon teams. As an Army Infantry Squad Leader, he successfully developed and led high-performing teams during peacetime and combat operations. At companies like WebAssign, TransLoc, and Red Hat, he combined his leadership experience and engineering mindset to build teams and organizations that met success through a culture of alignment, empowerment, and accountability.

What makes Jamie a great engineering leader?

We’ve spent a lot of time with Jamie over the last few months and beyond his engineering and leadership experience, we felt he was an amazing cultural fit to shape the team and share his insight with the engineering industry at large.

Jeremy Freeman, Co-founder & CTO summed it up well noting, “​​Jamie represents everything we were looking for in a strong engineering leader: compassion, delivery-focused, and experienced.”

Compassion

He has a strong desire to help the individuals who make up his team. For example, he’s excellent at identifying where they can succeed and where they might struggle; while also finding just the right way to help them grow in their role. His mindset on developing and nurturing, rather than directing and demanding, will help us build an engineering group that people will be excited to join and help us focus on the employee vs the lines of code that they write.

Delivery-Focused

Agile is a mindset before anything else. It focuses on getting value into customers’ hands as frequently as possible. At the same time, we realize the benefits of growth in this area through improved customer happiness, better team dynamics, and the ability to strike at whichever iron is the hottest at the time. Jamie brings a deep understanding of this process and will be a strong advocate for agility.

Experienced

Running engineering at a startup is very different than other functions. Things are very dynamic, and, try as you might, it’s hard to have a long-term solid plan. Having a leader who has been through this multiple times and understands the balance between planning, doing, leading, and coaching is critical. Jamie has not only put in the time to read the books and listen to the industry leaders, but he’s also put those ideas and techniques into practice.