Principal Architect & Engineering Leader

Designing and delivering scalable, high-performance solutions across cloud, mobile, and web platforms. Driving technical excellence and fostering innovation.

"10 years ago, I thought I could solve any problem with any tool handed to me. I suppose my definition of "solve" has since changed. Simply solutioning for any single customer request is certainly not solving anything. That’s because there will be subsequent requests, the product owner or business goals will change, the scale will change, and there is no crystal ball that properly forecasts the future. Solving for a single request without thinking about scalability means you, the developer will create technical debt from day one, a year down the road the team will begin to hit a wall and the refactoring tickets will start to come in. It doesn’t have to go that way. There is another path that allows for improvements in velocity and scale with very little accumulation of technical debt. Instead of refactoring code, refactor your approach to development and you will, in very little time, build simple, scalable systems that outperform."

Core Competencies

Cloud & Infrastructure

  • AWS
  • GCP
  • CDN & Edge Computing
  • Infrastructure as Code

Data & Analytics

  • Data Architecture
  • Real-time Data Streaming
  • Data Warehousing
  • ETL/ELT Pipelines

Software Engineering

  • Native Apple (iOS/macOS)
  • Full-Stack Web
  • API Design & Microservices
  • DevOps & CI/CD

Leadership & Design

  • Technical Strategy
  • System Design
  • Team Leadership & Mentorship
  • Product Alignment

Click on a competency above to see details of my experience.

Key Experience & Projects

SaaS Data Product

LeadershipCloud Data Web Native AndroidNative AppleNative Roku

At Warner Brothers Discovery, I invented and developed a new SaaS product to enable quick and easy onboarding of new customers to first-party Identity, Telemetry, and Privacy services, with no further customer maintence required. Cross-fuctionally trained teams to swarm new customers, resulting in over 3,000% increase in new customer adoption YoY.

Multi Cloud Video QoS

System DesignCloudCDNData

At Dolby, I served as Chief Architect for packet-level CDN switching product. Reduced costs and removed roadblocks to onboarding new customers while also reducing latency and increasing avalability and maintainability. Decreased new customer adoption time from 1 month to 1 day. Increased data throughput by 700%. Reduced delivery costs by over 70%.

Golf Products and CMS

CDN Cloud API Design WebCMS

For the PGA of America and European Tour, I consolidated 20 microsites into single system. Integrated REST API and reduced app server response time by 97%. Created multi-module, muti-repo software architecture with a custom theme injection system, to easilly manage the look and features of multiple products served through a single system.

Get In Touch

I'm always open to discussing new challenges. Reach out at neal.sawhney@swallday.com.