Matthew Long

Technology Executive · CTO · Engineering Leader

20+ years driving technical strategy and building high-performance engineering organizations

20+ Years Leading Teams
$300M Exit Stewardship
100+ Orgs Transformed
20+ Engineers Led

Leadership Philosophy

Builder-Leader

I lead by building alongside my team. Technical credibility comes from shipping code, not just directing it. With 2,300+ commits in the past year alone, I stay hands-on while setting strategic direction.

Org Multiplier

I design engineering organizations that scale. The right architecture of people is as important as the right architecture of code. I've built and led teams of teams — 20+ engineers across multiple product lines.

Outcome-Driven

Every technical decision maps to business impact. $300M exits happen when engineering and strategy align. I translate complex technical challenges into measurable business outcomes.

Executive Impact

$300M
Exit Contribution
Steered technical strategy at Evident.io through successful Palo Alto Networks acquisition
20+
Engineers Led
Built and managed cross-functional engineering teams across multiple product lines
DARPA
Alliance Member
Selected as distinguished technology innovator and leadership alliance member
Patent
Holder
Invented secure distributed messaging architecture — concept through patent grant
100+
Client Engagements
Trusted technical advisor across Fortune 500 and high-growth organizations
PhD
Mathematics
Research in distributed systems, quantum computing, and applied mathematics

Leadership Engagements

The same engagements, viewed through the lens of leadership, strategy, and organizational impact

Zoro / Grainger
Platform Strategy
2024 - 2025

Led cross-functional integration across 5+ distributed systems. Drove architectural decisions for microservices strategy handling millions of daily transactions. Coordinated with product, QA, and DevOps teams to deliver on aggressive timelines while scaling APIs to 10K req/s.

Architecture Strategy Cross-functional Leadership Microservices Stakeholder Alignment
TSI
Cloud Transformation
2024 - 2025

Defined cloud migration strategy and roadmap for legacy-to-modern transformation. Managed stakeholder alignment across engineering and business teams. Delivered 25% infrastructure cost reduction while improving reliability from 80% to 99.95% uptime — enabling 3x business growth.

Migration Strategy Cost Optimization Stakeholder Management Business Enablement
Pop Secret
Rapid Delivery
2025

Owned end-to-end delivery under 2-week deadline for national marketing campaign. Made build-vs-buy decisions on infrastructure, managed vendor relationships (Twilio, Vercel), and delivered 40% ahead of schedule. System handled 50K+ calls without incidents.

Vendor Management Build vs. Buy Deadline Delivery Risk Management
Cogability
AI Product Strategy
2023 - 2024

Drove AI adoption strategy for municipal government clients. Defined product roadmap for document intelligence platform. Led evaluation and integration of Vision LLM technologies (Claude, GPT-4V). Reduced client operational costs by eliminating 34 staff-hours per month.

AI Strategy Product Roadmap Government Clients Technology Evaluation
Shell
Analytics Leadership
2022 - 2023

Led team of 8 engineers on multi-cloud analytics platform. Established GitOps workflows and engineering best practices across the organization. Delivered $600K+ annual savings through ML-driven forecasting. Managed cross-team coordination across data science, platform, and operations.

Team Leadership Engineering Culture Multi-cloud Strategy Cost Savings
PredictiveHR
SaaS Product Vision
2021 - 2023

Architected product strategy for SaaS workforce analytics platform. Designed infrastructure strategy for scalable, cost-effective deployment. Integrated with enterprise HR systems (Workday, ADP, BambooHR) requiring complex vendor negotiations and API partnerships. Platform served 200+ HR professionals.

Product Strategy SaaS Architecture Vendor Partnerships Enterprise Integration
BetaCom
Engineering Lead
2020 - 2021

Led full-stack engineering team as Lead Engineer for 5G monitoring platform. Defined real-time architecture capable of 50M+ daily events. Reduced SLA penalties 75% through architectural decisions that cut incident detection from 8 minutes to 20 seconds. Mentored junior engineers and established code review practices.

Team Leadership Architecture Decisions SLA Management Mentorship
Fidelity Labs
Compliance Strategy
2020 - 2023

Drove compliance-first engineering culture for RegTech platform at a major financial institution. Managed multi-cloud strategy across AWS and GCP for SOC2-compliant infrastructure achieving 99.995% uptime. Led AI/ML adoption for regulatory classification, improving compliance accuracy 45%.

Compliance Leadership Multi-cloud Strategy AI Adoption Risk Mitigation
Evident.io
$300M Acquisition
2016 - 2018

Key contributor to technical strategy that positioned the company for $300M Palo Alto Networks acquisition. Drove cost optimization initiative saving $70K annually. Championed engineering quality culture — awarded "Bug Fix of the Year 2017." Scaled platform from 100K to 1M+ daily security events.

M&A Contribution Cost Optimization Engineering Culture Scale Strategy

Leadership & Strategic Skills

Strategic Leadership

Technical Vision & Roadmapping Build vs. Buy Decisions Vendor Evaluation Budget & Cost Optimization M&A Technical Due Diligence

Organization Building

Teams of Teams (20+ Engineers) Cross-functional Coordination Engineering Culture & Practices Mentorship & Career Development Agile at Scale

Technical Strategy

Cloud Migration Strategy AI/ML Adoption Roadmaps Platform Architecture Security & Compliance (SOC2, HIPAA, PCI) Multi-cloud Strategy

Business Impact

$300M Exit Contribution Revenue-Driving Platforms Cost Reduction Initiatives Compliance & Risk Mitigation Client Advisory & Consulting

Education

PhD Mathematics

Aion University

M.S. & B.S. Computer Science

University of Colorado

Certifications

Red Hat Certified, Microsoft Certified Professional

Innovation & Research

DARPA Innovator

Distinguished technology innovator and leadership alliance member

Patent Holder

Secure distributed messaging architecture

Published Research

Distributed systems, quantum computing, and applied mathematics

Sectors Served

Financial Services Energy & Utilities Technology Government Retail Healthcare

Let's discuss your technical leadership needs.

Whether you need a CTO, VP of Engineering, or technical advisor, I bring both strategic vision and hands-on engineering depth. See also my engineering profile for detailed technical implementations.