BEN McKENZIE
SR. SOFTWARE ENGINEERING MANAGER // GOOGLE
EXPERIENCE
Google
Sr. Software Engineering Manager | Dec 2019–Present
Austin, TX
Optum / UnitedHealth Group
Sr. Director, Engineering | 2012–2019
- Led Cloud Center of Excellence — AWS migration w/ HIPAA/HITRUST
- 66% improvement in data load for flagship OPA product
- Dropped outages from 6/mo → 0 for 6 months across multiple products
- Grew CMA portfolio from $40M → $80M revenue
- Owner of 40-person Data Hub platform group
The Advisory Board Co.
Sr. Director / Director | 2012–2019
- CMA, Data Hub/Platform, Care Variation (CMO+, RIC, SPC, Pop Health)
- Waterfall → bi-weekly Agile Scrum releases
- Led ChatOps: Lambda + API Gateway + HipChat integration
Thomson Reuters
Dir. IT & Engineering | 2000–2012
- Bank Insights — led product mgmt, dev, QA, IT
- Office/server relocation at 50% under budget
- Managed Russia + India remote teams
- Acquired Highline Financial → Thomson Reuters
Highline Financial / Highline Data
Dir. IT/Engineering | 2006–2010
- Led engineering through TR acquisition
- Implemented Agile; VMware vSphere + Oracle RAC
- Designed full IT infra for startup from scratch in 3 months
Sheshunoff / Thomson Media
Software Engineer → Mgr | 2000–2006
- Lead J2EE developer for financial data products
- Added MapInfo, GIS/mapping, ATM datasets
- Sun Solaris → HA Linux migration
University of Arkansas
Research Asst + Java Dev | 1996–2000
- Implemented AmpVIA (Virtual Interface Architecture) on Linux
- Managed Linux Beowulf clusters (PowerPC, x86, 68k)
- Java servlet apps for university computing services
TECH SKILLS
Languages
Java · Python · Scala · C# · Ruby
NodeJS · HTML5 · Objective-C · Perl
Frontend / Mobile
React · Angular · HTML5 · iOS (Obj-C)
Data & Databases
Spark · Hadoop · SparkML · PostgreSQL
MySQL · SQL Server · Oracle · MongoDB
DynamoDB · ElasticSearch · MicroStrategy
Cloud & DevOps
AWS (EC2, S3, EMR, EKS, Lambda, API GW)
Terraform · Packer · Docker
New Relic · Bamboo CI/CD · ChatOps
Infrastructure
Linux · Windows · VMware vSphere
Tomcat · IIS · Apache · Mulesoft (HL7/MLLP)
Process & Methodology
Agile Scrum & Kanban · Jira / Confluence
Bitbucket · FogBugz · CI/CD best practices
EDUCATION
UT Austin — McCombs School of Business
MBA | 2011–2014
Advanced Marketing, Corporate Finance,
Strategic Mgmt, Operations, Financial Accounting
University of Arkansas at Fayetteville
B.S. Computer Science, Minor Math | 1996–2000
Magna Cum Laude · Phi Beta Kappa Honors Society
CERTIFICATIONS
Generative AI with LLMs
DeepLearning.AI | Mar 2024
Neural Networks & Deep Learning
DeepLearning.AI | Feb 2024
Cloud Infrastructure w/ Terraform
Google | Jan 2024
Foundational Data, ML & AI — Google Cloud
Google | Dec 2020
STRENGTHS
Technical Leadership
25+ yrs hands-on engineering.
Bridges dev ↔ ops communication gaps.
Operational Reliability
Turned around instability at multiple orgs.
6/mo outages → 0 for 6 months.
People & Mentorship
Empowers teams, guides career growth,
mentors beyond formal reporting.