David Leary
| linkedin.com/in/david-leary
Summary
Seasoned engineering executive with 15+ years designing and operating mission-critical, multi-tenant platforms and 8+ years growing and leading globally distributed teams. Deep, hands-on practitioner of AI-augmented engineering — leveraging LLMs daily for architecture design, code review, test-driven development, and documentation to accelerate team velocity and decision quality. Adept at turning ambiguous business and engineering needs into clear, concise deliverables. Proven track record of building and leading global, high-impact teams that deliver. Skilled at guiding directors and managers, influencing executives and investors, and aligning cross-functional stakeholders to ship secure, performant solutions that underpin mission-critical products.
Core Competencies
| AI-Augmented Engineering & Developer Productivity | Strategic & Executive Collaboration |
| Scalable Cloud & On-Prem Infrastructure | Cross-Functional Service Orientation |
| Observability & Performance Optimization | Identity & Regulatory Compliance (ISO, SOC, NIST) |
| DevOps & CI/CD Automation | Crypto, Blockchain & Zero-Knowledge Systems |
| Security & Zero-Trust Networking | LLM-Assisted Architecture, Code Review & TDD |
| Leadership & Organization Building | Empathy & Candid Feedback |
Experience
Turnkey
Engineering Leadership | September 2025 – Present
- Pioneered engineering leadership as the first hire beyond cofounders, establishing engineering culture, processes, and technical direction from the ground up
- Directed a cross-functional engineering initiative to deploy replicated infrastructure and technology stacks in three global regions, slashing latency by up to 50%
- Instituted the company's inaugural engineering processes and best practices, enhancing team collaboration, velocity, and operational efficiency
- Integrated AI-assisted development practices into daily workflows, leveraging LLMs for architecture reviews, documentation generation, and accelerating code review cycles
Irreducible
Head of Infrastructure | September 2024 – August 2025
- Served as a key member of the executive team for a zero-knowledge startup focused on hardware-accelerated ZK proofs, contributing to company strategy, product-market fit exploration, and investor meetings
- Introduced and implemented engineering process frameworks including ADRs, RFCs, and structured approval workflows — using AI tooling to draft, review, and iterate on technical documents rapidly
- Created and implemented an engineering leveling and evaluation framework used to assess performance, growth, and promotions across all teams
- Built and scaled the infrastructure apparatus across physical and cloud environments, establishing core pillars: infrastructure, observability, CI/CD, and platform tooling
- Drove observability and CI/CD modernization by enabling logs, metrics, and traces to be collected and enriched through GitHub Actions, OpenTelemetry, Grafana, and Perfetto
- Architected and operated high-performance compute infrastructure, including FPGA-accelerated physical clusters with a proprietary custom compute orchestration layer
- Streamlined authentication and access to hybrid infrastructure, reducing friction and improving security posture across cloud and on-prem environments
- Leveraged AI-assisted infrastructure-as-code development to accelerate Terraform and configuration authoring, testing, and review
Chainlink Labs
Engineering Manager – Infrastructure Platform | September 2022 – September 2024
- Transitioned a team of SREs from a reactionary, DevOps-focused approach to a product-oriented platform team enabling self-service and automation — a shift that reduced developer friction and improved delivery speed
- Partnered with security and led an effort to quantify cloud infrastructure risk through threat modeling, testing, and observing malicious activity
- Took ownership of Chainlink's observability stack and migrated the solution in-house, resulting in greater than $3 million per year in savings from Grafana Cloud
- Improved observability and monitoring by hiring a sub-team and increasing reliability, launching new features like OpenTelemetry collectors and distributed tracing
- Established SLAs for the platform offering with defined SLOs and accountability metrics
- Led several cross-team efforts to improve identity, roles, and access management to custom engineering platforms and large, licensed SaaS products
- Built and deployed Chainlink's first service catalog to provide a source of truth with clear ownership
- Led the effort to improve external access by rolling out a zero-trust network solution, eliminating needless logins and authentication overhead
- Managed a 500+ distributed Kubernetes node environment, utilizing latest industry best practices and tooling such as Karpenter, Crossplane, and ArgoCD
- Partnered with the DECO team to mature Chainlink's zero-knowledge (ZK) product to be resilient, distributed, and ready for production-level use
Code and Theory
Technical Director – Director of DevOps | July 2021 – July 2022
- Led C&T's expansion into the web3/crypto market, establishing technical strategy and delivery capabilities for blockchain-based products
- Technical director supporting Jam City's play-to-earn Ethereum game from conception through a successful NFT drop and CMS selection — including smart contract writing and auditing
- Identified and delivered a unique DevOps strategy and platform for a fast-paced agency to accelerate work across multiple concurrent client engagements
- Drove on-time delivery of SaaS products, websites, and web3 solutions for well-known global brands such as Adidas, Washington Commanders, Corning, CNN's Magic Wall, Mars, and Amex
- Championed organization-wide code quality improvements for web applications and infrastructure — primarily Node, TypeScript, React, and Terraform
- Curated weekly web3 content and produced videos, tutorials, and educational materials for the broader organization
Merkle
Director of DevOps | October 2019 – July 2021
DevOps Engineer | May 2019 – October 2019
- Managed a diverse, global DevOps team of twelve supporting twenty-two accounts spanning dev, stage, and prod environments across all of Merkle's platforms
- Acted as strategist, architect, and lead in implementing DevOps and network engineering solutions
- Successfully completed the adoption of containerization and Kubernetes across all five of Merkle's core components
- Defined and enforced regulatory compliance and security best practices
- Built strong cross-functional relationships and ran virtual teams to develop and deliver innovative solutions for internal customers
- Implemented infrastructure as code to ensure continuous integration and continuous deployment across numerous cloud environments
- Automated complex deployments while maintaining millisecond latency requirements
- Architected and implemented new tooling and platforms for data science teams
Apex Clean Energy
Engineering Manager | January 2015 – May 2019
IT Systems Administrator | February 2013 – December 2014
- Designed and built the remote operations and control center (ROCC) for monitoring renewable energy assets
- Integrated over $3 billion worth of wind and solar assets into the ROCC
- Chief technical resource for asset management and operations
- Architected Apex's multi-building, multi-city, and disaster recovery network for high availability and redundancy
- Planned, organized, and executed all IT functions by working closely with the C-suite to execute a consistent, frugal IT strategy for rapid growth
Education & Certifications
Master of Business Administration – Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
Bachelor of Science in Information Systems – Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Amazon Web Services