Daniel Leeder

A History of Building and Leading

My career has been a journey from hands-on engineering to strategic leadership, defined by a constant focus on first principles and a passion for building resilient, scalable, and user-centric systems.

I've had the privilege of leading teams through major technological shifts—from the rise of the modern web to the challenges of cloud-native architecture and the strategic implementation of AI. This experience is not just a timeline of roles, but a portfolio of solved challenges, mentored teams, and delivered value. Below are a few highlights that showcase the core philosophies I bring to my advisory work.

Impact Highlights

Maturing a High-Compliance Engineering Organization

Context: At First Due, I led a 100+ person engineering organization in the high-stakes GovTech SaaS sector. The challenge was to mature our SDLC practices across 13 agile teams to improve velocity and reliability while adhering to strict compliance standards like FedRAMP and SOC2.

My Role as Director of Engineering: I drove a company-wide transformation of our agile workflows and engineering processes. This involved migrating the entire organization to a standardized JIRA framework, championing a culture of systems-thinking, and implementing advanced observability to move from reactive firefighting to proactive improvement.

The Result: We successfully reduced engineering cycle time by 50%, achieved a 10x improvement in incident response times, and reduced production errors by 90%, all while maintaining rigorous compliance. This demonstrated that mature processes don't slow you down; they enable you to move faster, safely.

Architecting the Startup-to-Scaleup Transition

Context: During my tenure at RollKall, I helped lead the company from an early-stage startup to a successful scaled organization, contributing to 100x revenue growth. The primary challenge was evolving our technology and teams from a functional V1 to a resilient, enterprise-ready platform.

My Role as a Leader: From Frontend Architect to Director of Engineering, I built and scaled our agile engineering teams and technology stack (Azure, C#/.NET, React Native). I architected and delivered a critical real-time product that secured a major government contract and led the full redesign and refactoring of our mobile app, establishing a new design system that cut feature delivery time by over 60%.

The Result: By implementing robust CI/CD automation and observability, we increased release velocity by 10x and achieved SOC2 Type II compliance, proving the V1 stack can't cross the finish line, but a strategic evolution can.

Driving Modernization in a High-Volume Enterprise

Context: At Heritage Auctions, the world's third-largest auction house, the challenge was to modernize a legacy platform to support massive transaction volumes ($18M+/month) and provide a modern, responsive user experience for a global audience.

My Role as Lead Developer: I led the development of the company's first customer-facing mobile app (achieving a 4.8-star rating), leveraging a full-stack PHP/Redis framework to handle over 1 million real-time bid transactions per day. A key strategic initiative was pioneering the web's transition from legacy jQuery to a modern, API-driven VueJS framework.

The Result: The modernization efforts not only supported massive scale but also dramatically improved the user experience, leading to high adoption and engagement. This was a clear case study in how "old isn't bad" is a dangerous mindset when user experience is on the line.

Revitalizing a Product Through UX First Principles

Context: As a Fractional CTO, a client's feature-rich SaaS product suffered from low user activation. User feedback consistently described the experience as "confusing," a classic symptom of the "Curse of Knowledge" and "Choice Overload."

My Role as a Consultant: I led a comprehensive UX audit focused not on adding features, but on applying core principles of cognitive science. We redesigned the onboarding flow by applying Hick's Law to reduce choices, used the Framing Effect to clarify the value proposition, and established clear defaults to guide users to their first "win" faster.

The Result: The redesigned journey led to a 30% increase in user activation rates and a 15% reduction in churn within the first quarter. Support tickets related to initial setup dropped by over 50%, proving that a deep understanding of user psychology is a key business driver.

Career History

Thought Leadership

In addition to my consulting work, I am an active writer and speaker on the topics of technology leadership, software architecture, and product strategy. My "Insights" blog serves as a platform for exploring the first principles that drive success in the technology industry, and I also offer workshops and talks for industry conferences.