cv: name: David Laing location: Dublin, Ireland, IE email: david@davidlaing.com social_networks: - network: GitHub username: mrdavidlaing - network: LinkedIn username: mrdavidlaing sections: summary: - Software supply chain specialist with 25 years across release engineering, SRE, and platform engineering at Mechanical Orchard, Shopify, VMware, Pivotal, and City Index. Launching Wellmaintained Ltd — a Dublin-based specialist consultancy focussed on SBOM, license compliance, CVE triage and patching, and the audit-ready documentation required by EU legislation like DORA and the CRA. Currently in a 3-month validation phase before incorporation (target August 2026). Comfortable taking on the hands-on supply-chain work most engineering teams find tedious — SBOM analysis, vulnerability triage, remediation-evidence collation — and producing audit-defensible output engineering teams can ship against. experience: - company: Mechanical Orchard position: Staff Software Engineer - AI Context Engineering Lead start_date: 2023-09 highlights: - Pioneered AI agent orchestration for Kubernetes/Terraform automation - creating environments where AI agents collaborate and self-correct - Continued Decision Copilot development through collaborative IP sharing agreement - Built and maintained cloud infrastructure on GCP and AWS for Imogen modernization platform - Applied behavior-driven transformation to legacy system modernization end_date: 2026-04 location: San Francisco, CA - company: Make Time Together Ltd position: Co-founder start_date: 2023-08 highlights: - Built Decision Copilot - open-source tool for structured team decision-making (started 2023-08) - Developed full-stack applications using NextJS, React, and TypeScript for decision-making tools - Applied platform engineering principles to financial systems architecture and data reconciliation - Established IP sharing agreement with Mechanical Orchard enabling collaborative development while retaining ownership location: Dublin, Ireland - company: Shopify Ltd position: Senior Staff Reliability Engineer start_date: 2022-05 highlights: - Maintained platform reliability during $3.5M/minute peak traffic (BFCM) through data-driven monitoring - Pioneered data reliability engineering practices for 100PB data lake infrastructure - Applied long-term reliability thinking to commerce platform serving millions of merchants end_date: 2023-07 - company: VMware Ltd position: Staff 2 Software Engineer (Data) start_date: 2020-05 highlights: - Built and maintained dagster.io data pipelines for cross-portfolio analytics - Established telemetry gathering and data curation practices for R&D insights - Created data-driven feedback loops for business unit strategic decisions end_date: 2022-04 - company: Pivotal Software Ltd position: Director of Engineering/SRE start_date: 2015-12 highlights: - Orchestrated balanced leadership team driving shared outcomes across ~80 R&D teams globally - Built SRE team from scratch to operate Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes platforms - Established reliability practices for pivotaltracker.com (1M active users) and UK charity donation platforms (£1B+ donations) - Created data-driven understanding of enterprise customer upgrade challenges - Collaborated with Google SRE engineers on SLI/SLO design and error budget implementation end_date: 2020-04 - company: StayUp.io Ltd position: Co-founder start_date: 2015-03 highlights: - Created open-source ELK distribution handling 2TB daily log ingest for Cloud Foundry ecosystem - Built product from concept to acquisition in 7 months end_date: 2015-12 - company: City Index Ltd position: R&D Team Leader start_date: 2008-12 highlights: - Led LogSearch open source project for Cloud Foundry ecosystem log aggregation - Established TDD & Agile practices across development teams - Led organizational transition to open-source software adoption - Pioneered migration to public cloud infrastructure end_date: 2015-03 location: London, UK - company: BBC Worldwide position: Agile Developer start_date: 2008-05 highlights: - Learned foundational XP, TDD, and pair programming practices - Contributed to Kangaroo digital media platform development end_date: 2008-10 location: London, UK - company: Lucid Communications Ltd position: Senior Developer start_date: 2003-08 highlights: [] end_date: 2007-04 location: London, UK - company: Vardus Internet Solutions position: Developer start_date: 2001-01 highlights: [] end_date: 2002-08 location: Cape Town, SA education: - institution: University of Cape Town area: Information Systems degree: Bachelor of Business Science (Honours) start_date: 1997-01 end_date: 2000-12 highlights: - Information Systems - Statistics publications: - title: 'From Values to Velocity: Building Momentum Through Aligned Systems' authors: - David Laing date: 2024-02 journal: Unpublished Thoughts - Exploration of how shared values create alignment frameworks that enable sustainable team momentum - with practical examples from engineering leadership - title: Staying up-to-date with Kubernetes authors: - David Laing journal: Web Publication - Explorable model for understanding enterprise software upgrade challenges and long-term maintenance practices - title: SRE & the Vulnerability Budget authors: - David Laing date: 2019-03 journal: SRECon AMER - Using Error Budget model to balance security patching with feature development - applying structured decision-making to operational priorities projects: - name: Decision Copilot Development date: '2023' highlights: - Open-source tool for structured team decision-making, addressing the gap between individual expertise and collective decision quality. Developed under Make Time Together Ltd with collaborative IP sharing enabling continued development at Mechanical Orchard. - Built framework for transparent, repeatable decision processes - Created learning loops for decision quality improvement - Established sustainable development model through strategic IP sharing agreement - Growing community around structured decision-making practices technologies: - label: Context Engineering & Orchestration details: AI Agent Orchestration, Team Environment Design, Cross-functional Collaboration, Decision Framework Design - label: Financial Systems & Platform Engineering details: Financial Data Reconciliation, Small Business Finance Applications, Platform Engineering for Finance, Investment Company Operations - label: Modern Web Ecosystem details: TypeScript, NextJS, Firebase, TurboRepo, Full-stack Architecture Patterns - label: Cloud Infrastructure & Platform Engineering details: GCP Networking, Kubernetes, Terraform, Golang, Bash, Platform Architecture Patterns - label: Data Engineering & Analytics details: BigQuery, Python, SQL, dagster.io, Data Pipeline Architecture - label: Leadership & Methodology details: Authentic Leadership, Long-term Systems Thinking, Learning Loops, TDD, Collaborative Development - label: Personal details: Father, Roblox, Minecraft, Dad-jokes design: theme: engineeringresumes