Senior Engineering Manager · Los Angeles, California
Engineering leadership through better systems.
I lead engineering teams that ship reliably and stay together, and I build the platforms, observability, delivery process, and AI-enabled workflows that make an engineering organization faster, more reliable, and easier to lead.
I am a Senior Engineering Manager with more than twenty years in software. Most recently, at Fanatics Betting and Gaming, I led the teams behind content delivery, the CMS, and shared platform services for a sportsbook and retail product on web and mobile. I have also worked as a developer, architect, CTO, and director.
My approach is consistent. I learn the system quickly, agree with the business on what it needs, turn that into work engineers can act on, and put in place the process and tooling that make good delivery repeatable.
- Most recent role
- Senior Engineering Manager, Fanatics Betting and Gaming (March 2023 – September 2026)
- Availability
- Senior Engineering Manager or Director of Engineering
- Team scope
- Typically 8–12 direct reports; a peak of 11 at Fanatics and close to 20 at Stayhealthy
- Career range
- Developer, architect, CTO, director, and manager, across 20+ years
- Industries
- Sportsbook and betting, automotive e-commerce, language learning, digital health
- Technology
- Java, Kotlin, PostgreSQL, AWS, Datadog, Terraform, Jira and Atlassian tools
Scale and outcomes, in numbers.
faster responses from the content delivery service that replaced a GraphQL service, cutting latency from 30–60 seconds to 30–60 milliseconds, with no production incidents for over six months and no issues on Super Bowl traffic.
monitors generated with Terraform from a template, so every new endpoint and service gets standard coverage of latency, errors, memory, CPU, and SLOs, with P1 incidents paging automatically.
promotions on my team over three and a half years, including an engineer who moved into engineering management, with only one voluntary departure.
engineers, as I grew the Stayhealthy development organization across UI/UX, front end, services, and database administration.
direct reports in a typical assignment, from early-career engineers to Senior Staff, with a peak of 11 at Fanatics and close to 20 at Stayhealthy.
The organizational problems I take on.
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Engineering operating systems
The visibility and safety nets that let teams ship often: more than 200 Terraform-generated monitors with automatic P1 paging, rollback automation, and capacity and sprint data that show where a team really stands.
See the experience → -
Teams that scale
Hiring for fit as well as skill, career paths with clear milestones, mentoring, and promotions. I grew the Fanatics team from one engineer to as many as 11 direct reports, and the Stayhealthy organization from four developers to twenty.
See the team outcomes ↓ -
Platforms that scale
Shared services and delivery platforms that carry real traffic: a content delivery service about a thousand times faster than the GraphQL service it replaced, migrated one endpoint at a time, and a consolidated content platform across languages and regions.
Read the case study → -
AI-augmented engineering
Agents that do defined jobs inside an engineering organization: scanning repositories for bugs and opening fix pull requests, assessing team capacity and suggesting one-on-one topics, and running a print-on-demand shop end to end.
See the AI work →
What happened to the people I led.
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Promotions and retention
Six promotions on my team over three and a half years, with only one voluntary departure.
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A wide range of levels
Direct reports from early-career engineers to Senior Staff, typically 8–12 at a time, with a peak of 11 at Fanatics and close to 20 at Stayhealthy.
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Managers developed
One engineer on my team moved into engineering management.
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Hiring
Built the Fanatics team from one engineer, welcomed two internal transfers who asked to join, and assessed 12 engineers in an acqui-hire, bringing on the five we committed to.
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Mentoring beyond my reporting line
I mentor engineers outside my own teams, including as a MentorCruise mentor in 2022, coaching junior and mid-level engineers on interviews, code reviews, and visibility.
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Growth programs
Tech talks, innovation projects, and short-term goals kept skills growing, and I wrote Motivating Your Team: Continual Improvement Sessions.
Five working principles.
Learn the system before changing it.
I have a record of joining active projects and teams, understanding how they actually work, and improving efficiency and quality of output without interrupting delivery.
Turn priorities into work engineers can act on.
I work with product managers and stakeholders to define scope and requirements and to set expectations early, so that developers receive clear tasks and everyone knows what will be delivered.
Make the safe path the easy path.
Reliability and release confidence are engineering products in their own right. I invest in observability, automated validation, and rollback automation so that teams can ship often without depending on individual heroics.
Hire for the team, not just the résumé.
I weigh compatibility, personality, and drive alongside technical ability when I hire. Teams built that way work well together, and they excel together.
Invest in the people doing the work.
I learn each engineer’s goals and build career paths with clear milestones. Tech talks, innovation projects, and short-term goals keep skills growing, and the result has been dedicated teams with near-flawless retention, including through changes of priority. I also mentor engineers outside my own teams.
What colleagues say
“He is truly one of the most talented engineers and leaders I have worked with.”
“David is always looking for ways to improve the systems he owns and streamline processes to create better outcomes for his stakeholders such as researching new technologies or evaluating previous tools that have been implemented and making sure that they are serving the purpose for the business. David would be a great asset to any organization and I look forward to working with him again in the future!”
“David is a great manager, developer, and a great manager of developers. During my time working with David, he’s always been very transparent with communicating that he has the back of his team, while proving it by putting his neck on the line for us time after time.”
“Any team will thrive and flourish under David’s expert leadership.”
“He is a problem solver and plain and simply gets things done.”
Excerpts from LinkedIn recommendations.
Where the work happened.
- Senior Engineering Manager, Fanatics Betting and Gaming
- Engineering Manager, Carvana
- Engineering Manager, Rosetta Stone
- CTO, GlobeChat
- Director of Software Development, Stayhealthy
Agents, dashboards, and a ranked list of bugs.
Four projects show how I apply AI. A dashboard built with Claude scores a team’s sprint health. Nine AI agents run a live print-on-demand shop, taking each product from request to listing. Claude agents scan repositories, file a ranked list of bugs, and open pull requests to fix them. And an AI-configured dashboard is the front door to my lab. Each has a write-up of the design and how AI was used.
What I’m exploring now.
- Agentic software development
- AI-assisted engineering management
- Autonomous operations
- Developer experience
- Self-hosted and private infrastructure
- Organizational design for human + AI teams
Updated September 2026.
Certifications, writing, and education.
- Certifications
- Microsoft Certified Professional
Certificate of Completion: AI Fluency Framework & Foundations - Publication
- Motivating Your Team: Continual Improvement Sessions
- Education
- San Joaquin Delta College, computer science coursework (1995–1998); no degree
- Core skills
- Engineering management, performance management, AI fluency