Kevin Church
Hands-on Engineering Leader
B2B SaaS Project Management Founding Engineer
About Me
Hi! I’m Kevin Church, a hands-on engineering leader with 20+ years of experience scaling B2B SaaS platforms from founding engineer to VP, including successful private equity acquisition. Based in Malvern, PA, I’m passionate about creating scalable solutions, mentoring engineers, and building high-performing distributed teams through servant leadership focused on psychological safety and empowerment.
Quick Facts
Location
Malvern, PA 19355 (Greater Philadelphia)
Education
Bachelor of Science in Computer and Information Science
University of Delaware
Experience
20+ years of software engineering leadership
Interests
Coding & Technology, Drums, Guitar, Woodworking,
Car Projects, Welding, Making Things
Philosophy
Strong advocate for open source software and transparent, collaborative development
Skills
Combining 20+ years of software engineering leadership with modern technology development and expanding into AI/ML capabilities.
Software Development
Building scalable B2B SaaS platforms with Java, JavaScript/TypeScript, Vue.js, and Node.js. Specializing in modern frameworks, enterprise applications, RESTful APIs, and microservices architecture with a focus on reliability and performance.
Artificial Intelligence
Leveraging AI/ML tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Custom GPTs) to enhance development workflows and solve problems more efficiently. Exploring local AI infrastructure (Ollama, Open WebUI, n8n) for enterprise deployment strategies.
Continuous Improvement
Obsessed with efficiency and optimization through Agile, DevOps, OKRs, TDD, and rigorous PR reviews. Using Elasticsearch and Kibana to measure, analyze, and systematically improve development processes and team performance.
Cloud & Infrastructure
Full-stack infrastructure experience from bare metal to AWS cloud (EC2, RDS, ECS). Proficient in Docker/Podman, VMWare/KVM, Linux, PostgreSQL/Oracle, and CI/CD pipelines with Jenkins and GitHub Actions.
Engineering Expertise
Focused on performance tuning, security hardening, and architectural decisions. I balance bleeding-edge technologies with battle-tested solutions, choosing the right approach based on risk tolerance and business requirements.
Team Leadership
Servant leader focused on psychological safety and empowering distributed teams (in-person, remote, offshore) through cross-functional collaboration. I believe it’s essential for leaders to give credit and take responsibility, fostering trust and accountability. Average team tenure of 11 years.
Security & Compliance
Comprehensive knowledge of enterprise security including SOC 2 certification, SIEM, Zero Trust, SSO/SAML, ITSM, endpoint management, vulnerability scanning, and penetration testing.
Business & Strategy
Making pragmatic decisions that balance immediate needs with long-term vision. Experienced in investor due diligence, vendor management, budget planning, and aligning technology strategy with business objectives.
Enterprise Integrations
Designing and building native and iPaaS integrations using MuleSoft, REST APIs, and authentication protocols. Skilled at creating integrations that accelerate GTM, increase product stickiness, and enable seamless enterprise connectivity.
Platform Reliability
Building and maintaining highly reliable systems at scale. Strong foundation in monitoring, incident management, and disaster recovery planning with a focus on proactive incident prevention and resilient system design.
Data & Analytics
Creating data-driven platforms using Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana (ELK). Skilled at designing customer analytics, performance dashboards, and observability tools that enable data-informed decisions and proactive customer success.
Experience
20+ years of experience scaling B2B SaaS platforms from founding engineer to VP, including successful private equity acquisition. Deep expertise in SOC 2 compliance, AWS cloud migration, enterprise integrations, and building high-performing distributed teams.
Workzone
VP of Engineering
Bootstrapped to Private Equity-Owned B2B SaaS Project Management platform
Key Achievements
- Set technical vision and architecture for a reliable, scalable SaaS platform while maintaining hands-on involvement in all critical systems
- Built and managed engineering team, hiring and mentoring talent, achieving an average tenure of 11 years
- Managed offshore development team of 3-4 engineers for MuleSoft iPaaS integration initiatives
- Evaluated and implemented AI-augmented development tools and workflows to enhance team productivity
- Oversaw infrastructure, security, compliance, and technology spend of $500k
- Achieved SOC 2 compliance on time and under budget by developing policies, documentation, and processes with minimal disruption
- Established enterprise security infrastructure including SIEM, ITSM, endpoint management, vulnerability scanning, and penetration testing
- Led vendor selection and contract negotiations for security tools and services, reducing costs by 20% while improving coverage
- Partnered with internal and external teams to build iPaaS and native enterprise integrations, accelerating GTM and supporting acquisition of higher-value customers
- Developed custom GPT trained on SOC 2 policies, cutting security questionnaire completion time by 50-70%
- Reduced technical debt by 30% through strategic refactoring initiatives while maintaining feature velocity
- Maintained industry-leading reliability of 99.999% and sub-100ms application response times
- Prepared managers for senior roles through structured leadership development programs
- Implemented CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices with Jenkins to accelerate delivery
- Architected containerization and migration of legacy systems to AWS
- Led tech due diligence and transition to private equity ownership
Workzone
Director of Engineering
B2B SaaS Project Management platform
Key Achievements
- Led engineering team of 3-4 while remaining deeply technical and hands-on with code and architecture
- Balanced feature delivery with technical debt reduction, while maintaining system reliability
- Implemented best practices for code quality, testing, and incident response
- Collaborated with Product and Design to align on roadmap priorities
- Collaborated cross-functionally with Sales and Customer Success to deliver enterprise features including SSO/SAML authentication, driving 20% increase in deal velocity and enabling higher-tier pricing
- Designed and built REST API that expanded enterprise integrations, increased product stickiness to drive retention, and enhanced customer efficiency, fueling revenue growth and market expansion
- Initiated and executed an Oracle-to-PostgreSQL migration with 100M+ row tables, improving performance, reliability, and maintainability while eliminating database licensing and support costs
- Implemented Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana (ELK) for comprehensive observability, creating platform performance dashboards, extracting customer usage intelligence for product development and customer success initiatives, and enabling proactive incident detection through real-time alerting
- Increased feature delivery speed by 30% by introducing Agile and OKRs
Workzone
Engineering Manager
B2B SaaS Project Management platform
Key Achievements
- Expanded team by hiring operations engineer to handle growing infrastructure needs while maintaining hands-on technical leadership
- Managed team of 2-3 engineers across development and operations
- Continued backend development and database architecture responsibilities
- Implemented secure remote work capabilities for the entire company
- Managed office networking, wifi, and VPN infrastructure
- Built multi-datacenter data replication system to ensure failover capabilities
- Strengthened security posture through improved backup strategies and disaster recovery procedures
- Enhanced platform project management capabilities while maintaining system performance
- Coordinated with stakeholders across the organization to implement company-wide remote work infrastructure, achieving 100% adoption with zero business disruption
- Established operational excellence practices that reduced incidents by 50%
- Strengthened team skills and readiness through mentorship and technical knowledge sharing
Workzone
Principal Engineer
SaaS platform scaling and infrastructure expansion
Key Achievements
- Led all system architecture and technical debt prioritization decisions while managing the tech team and continuing hands-on development
- Designed and implemented infrastructure expansion including a second colocation facility
- Maintained 24/7 on-call responsibilities while establishing redundant systems
- Continued primary responsibility for backend systems and database design
- Managed office relocation technical infrastructure, overseeing contractors installing Cat6 throughout the 200-year-old building, deploying Avaya phone system, establishing redundant internet connections (FiOS/Comcast), and building out server room and enterprise wifi
- Drove platform expansion, doubling datacenter capacity with warm-standby systems, enhancing resiliency and reducing RTO/RPO
- Expanded product's project management capabilities to support enterprise customers
- Maintained 99.99% uptime while managing infrastructure growth
- Served as technical mentor to the growing engineering team
Workzone
Staff Engineer
SaaS platform development and team mentorship
Key Achievements
- Coached and mentored growing tech team, conducting performance reviews and career development
- Delegated frontend development tasks while owning backend and database architecture
- Continued all infrastructure, security, and operational responsibilities
- Maintained 24/7 on-call duties while building team capabilities
- Designed and scaled infrastructure supporting platform growth
- Built a customer analytics platform that became the primary tool for product roadmap decisions and enabled the customer success team to proactively identify at-risk accounts and expansion opportunities
- Established patterns and processes that scaled with company growth
Workzone
Founding Engineer
Early-stage SaaS platform development from zero to first 50 customers
Key Achievements
- Solo technical founding engineer responsible for the company's entire technology stack and operations on bootstrapped startup budget
- Designed UI, wrote all code, optimized database design and performance
- Racked servers, configured firewalls, established backup and recovery strategies
- Provided 24/7 on-call support for customers and IT assistance for all employees
- Wrote security policies, conducted testing, and managed on-prem infrastructure
- Hired and managed interns, sourced and recruited first full-time engineer in 2004
- Built platform from zero to serve first 50 enterprise customers with 100% uptime commitment
- Refactored legacy JSP platform to modern MVC architecture supporting multi-tenant SaaS operations
- Established foundational security, backup, and operational practices
- Successfully recruited and onboarded first technical hire, beginning team growth
Verilaw Technologies
Senior Software Engineer
Legal technology solutions for government electronic filing systems
Key Achievements
- Enhanced developer experience through automated tooling, building custom ORM that generated Java classes and stored procedures from MS SQL schemas
- Accelerated development velocity by 20% through code generation tools
- Resolved critical production deadlocks via connection pooling, achieving 40% performance gain
- Mentored 10+ senior developers on Java/OO practices and streamlined development workflows
- Automated CRUD operations for government electronic filing systems
- Created automations for PDF manipulation
InternetSeer
Software Engineer
Web monitoring-as-a-service platform
Key Achievements
- Engineered scalable web-crawling platform processing 1M URLs/hour per server
- Powered the company's monitoring-as-a-service business model through JMS messaging
- Implemented low-level database I/O optimization and advanced caching strategies
- Designed scalable architecture on commodity hardware
- Optimized database performance for high-volume processing
Odyssey Systems
Java Developer
Custom software development for enterprise clients
Key Achievements
- Pioneered secure document sharing platform that evolved into Workzone
- Created the platform that grew to serve 500+ enterprise customers over 20 years
- Built and maintained server-side business logic, data processing, and application workflows
- Worked with clients, designers, and product managers to convert business requirements into technical implementations
Technical Skills
Core technical expertise built over 20+ years of hands-on software engineering leadership in B2B SaaS environments.
Programming Languages
Databases
Web & UI
Cloud & Infrastructure
Development Tools
Project Management
Let's Connect
Send me a message
Contact Information
Let's connect! I'm always interested in hearing about new projects and opportunities.