Bill Johnston

billjohnston@pm.me
github.com/billjohnston
linkedin.com/in/bill-johnston-7549ab16
(516) 835-1132
Summary

Director of Engineering based in NYC specializing in serverless AWS architecture and AI-powered product development. Former CTO and founding engineer at two successful startups; proven track record of building products from zero to scale and growing engineering teams.

Skills

Cloud & Infra:

AWS • AWS CDK • Cloudformation • Lambda • ECS • SQS • Api Gateway • Step Functions • DynamoDB • Cognito • Docker • Elasticsearch • Databricks

Languages:

TypeScript • Javascript • Node.js • Bun • Python • Django • Jest • TDD

Frontend:

React • React Native • Expo

AI:

Claude API • Claude Code • MCP • LLM Integration • Prompt Engineering • AI-Assisted Development

Experience

Max Retail | Director of Engineering
Sep 2022 - Present (3 years 8 months)

The easiest way to sell your leftover inventory

  • Promoted to Director of Engineering, leading and mentoring a team of 7 engineers through regular 1:1s, performance reviews, and technical direction

  • Drove adoption of AI-assisted development tooling (Claude Code) across the engineering team, improving developer productivity

  • Architected and built a proof-of-concept for an AI-augmented product enhancement pipeline, automating the cleansing and enrichment of retailer product data with human-in-the-loop validation, leveraging prompt engineering to optimize LLM output quality

  • Built internal MCP servers to give engineering and business teams direct, structured access to MaxRetail data

  • Built and scaled Lightspeed and Square POS integrations into the MaxRetail platform, supporting 217 retailers with active inventory and processing ~28.5K listing units across ~$3.02M in listed inventory value

  • Engineered a comprehensive Order Management System (OMS) integrating Mirakl and Monday.com, automating 70% of company order processing

  • Built a lead scoring system that parsed and ranked 5 million Shopify stores to surface and prioritize sales targets, resulting in hundreds of net-new retailers onboarded

Talkspace | Tech Lead
Dec 2020 - Sep 2022 (1 year 9 months)

#1 Rated Online Therapy

  • Promoted to Tech Lead from Senior Software Engineer, authoring RFCs, planning sprints, and leading developers in the implementation of new features

  • Built video call transcription service using AWS StepFunctions, ECS, Lambda, Typescript

  • Built multi-region scheduled job service using AWS Event Rules, Lambda, DynamoDB, API Gateway, and React Admin

  • Built SAML single sign on service using AWS Cognito, Lambda

  • Migrated custom authentication to AWS Cognito

Quadio | CTO
Jan 2019 - Sep 2020 (1 year 8 months)

Music streaming application for emerging artists

  • Hired and managed an engineering team of 11

  • Built CI/CD and infrastructure as code using AWS CDK and Github Actions

  • Built the music streaming web application using React

  • Built the music streaming mobile application using React Native

  • Built the REST API using AWS ECS, Python, and Django

  • Built the media transcoding microservice using AWS StepFunctions, ECS, Lambda, Typescript, and FFMPEG

  • Built the search microservice using Lambda, Api Gateway, and Elasticsearch

Fullscreen | Sr. Software Developer
Apr 2018 - Jan 2019 (9 months)

Reelio was acquired to incorporate its application into Fullscreen's marketing workflow

  • Joined via acquisition of Reelio, contributing to full-stack feature development integrating Reelio's influencer marketing application into Fullscreen's creator economy platform

  • Managed the front-end team of 4 developers

  • Built the REST API using Python and Django

  • Built the web client using React

Reelio | FullStack Developer
Mar 2013 - Apr 2018 (5 years 1 month)

Influencer marketing management application

  • First developer hired; helped grow the engineering team to 15

  • Managed the Front-end team of 4 developers

  • Built the REST Api using Python and Django

  • Built the web client using both Angular and React

Sneak Attack Media | FullStack Developer
Nov 2010 - Mar 2013 (2 years 3 months)

Social media marketing applications for musicians

  • Built custom marketing applications for artists including Third Eye Blind and Florence and the Machine

  • Created a CMS to generate common marketing applications using Wordpress; still in use today

Education

Drexel University, Bachelor Information Systems 2004 - 2009