Resume
Aaron VanDerlip
Engineering Manager | Platform & Product Engineering
Email: aaron@notabot.org
Phone: 541-505-2549
SUMMARY
Engineering manager with 15+ years of experience across platform and product engineering. Proven track record of leading multiple engineering teams, stabilizing underperforming organizations, modernizing legacy systems, and building engineering cultures focused on delivery, ownership, and technical excellence. Comfortable operating as both hands-on technical contributor and people manager.
EXPERIENCE
Instinct Science — Engineering Manager
June 2025 – Present
- Managed three engineering teams across diverse technical stacks (15 engineers total), owning delivery, hiring, and technical execution
- Rebuilt a degraded engineering organization following significant attrition, stabilizing delivery by modernizing legacy infrastructure, replacing outdated systems, and fixing unreliable CI/CD pipelines
- Served as acting technical lead during recovery efforts, contributing directly to architectural decisions and hands-on engineering implementation
- Designed and built core tooling for a content scraping detection platform to identify and mitigate automated data extraction and abuse patterns
- Coached and developed engineering leads across multiple teams, strengthening leadership capability, technical ownership, and accountability
- Drove shift from waterfall delivery to iterative product engineering model aligned with product–design–engineering triad
HashiCorp — Engineering Manager (developer.hashicorp.com)
April 2024 – February 2025
- Owned development and maintenance of developer.hashicorp.com (Next.js/React documentation and tutorial platform)
- Rebuilt frontend engineering team after near-total staff turnover
- Established engineering culture focused on monitoring, testing, and documentation to ensure system stability
- Transitioned team from siloed individual work to collaborative engineering workflows
Heap — Engineering Manager
May 2022 – December 2023
- Managed a team of five senior engineers building reporting and visualization systems for analytics products
- Guided team through major organizational restructuring while maintaining delivery stability
- Improved collaboration between product engineering and solutions engineering teams
- Strengthened code quality, system reliability, and delivery consistency
- Recognized for improving team morale and execution during periods of organizational change
O'Reilly Media — Engineering Manager / Senior Software Engineer
July 2017 – May 2022
- Led distributed engineering team delivering core product features
- Owned hiring, mentorship, and technical direction
- Promoted to Engineering Manager in April 2021, expanding scope to include team leadership and delivery ownership
Technical Leadership & Platform Work
- Spearheaded implementation of JWT-based authentication and authorization microservice
- Led modernization efforts for React-based and Django-based applications
- Established microservice development workflow using Traefik Proxy
- Administered and supported production systems using Docker and Kubernetes
- Pioneered integration of new software libraries to improve developer experience
- Mentored junior engineers and improved onboarding and team growth
Global Health Delivery Project (Harvard University) — Software Engineer
October 2010 – July 2017
- Engineered Django-based systems including GHDonline.org and Tuberculosis Design Roster
- Implemented automated deployment, backup, and monitoring systems
- Re-architected email delivery and processing systems for improved reliability
- Built Elasticsearch + Tika faceted search system
- Modernized application build systems to support concurrent development workflows
Jazkarta — Director of Consulting Services
June 2008 – October 2010
- Developed Plone CMS-based web applications for clients
- Built custom CMS functionality and extensions
- Evaluated and refactored client and third-party codebases
- Managed and coordinated distributed engineering teams across client projects
Oxfam America — Web Developer
February 2007 – June 2008
- Developed Python and Plone-based web applications
- Implemented deployment, version control, and operational improvements
- Performed FreeBSD system administration
- Coordinated with hosting providers to resolve production issues
EDUCATION
Portland State University (Honors College)
Southern Oregon University
SKILLS
Python · JavaScript (ES6) · React · Next.js · Django · Django REST Framework · Flask · SQLite · Elasticsearch · Redis · RabbitMQ · AWS · Docker · Kubernetes · Nginx · Apache · CI/CD · Git · System Architecture · Team Leadership · Mentorship · Product Engineering