James Westover

Director of Engineering — Technical Vision, Organizational Scale, Delivery Excellence

Profile

Engineering executive with deep experience setting technical vision, building multi-team organizations, and driving delivery at global scale. As Founder & CTO of Westover Labs, operates as the full technical executive function for a German-registered consulting and product company — owning organizational design, build-vs-buy decisions, vendor management, budget, and executive communication across a portfolio of AI-powered products. At Uber, influenced org-wide architecture as a Staff Engineer and built the Location Platform from zero — driving $30M+ in fraud savings, 97%+ GPS reliability, and GDPR compliance for a global fleet. At HERE Technologies, led 15 engineers across 5 subteams delivering Highly Autonomous Driving programs in partnership with Intel, Nvidia, Audi, and Mercedes-Benz — including ISO 9001 certification for safety-critical software. MBA-educated. Comfortable at the board/exec table on topics from AI strategy and compliance to infrastructure unit economics and platform M&A readiness. Available for Director/VP of Engineering roles in the EU.

Director / VP of Engineering Competencies — Mapped to Experience:

Organizational Design & Multi-Team Leadership: Built Capture Systems org at HERE from 2 to 15 engineers, structured across 5 specialized subteams with distinct charters, hiring plans, and delivery roadmaps. Founded Location Platform at Uber from scratch — defined team mission, set OKRs, and built the hiring pipeline. At Westover Labs, designed full organizational model (human + AI contributors) and operates as CTO overseeing all technical functions.
Technical Vision & Strategy: Set 3-year technical roadmap for HERE Capture Systems program, including next-gen mapping rig (HT4), ADAS pipeline, and fleet visualization platform. At Uber, shaped org-wide migration strategy for Python 2→3 (90%+ of production services, Office of CTO sponsorship). At Westover Labs, defined multi-year platform architecture across AI inference, mobile, backend services, and home-hosted infrastructure.
Executive Communication & Stakeholder Management: Regular executive-facing reporting at Uber on compliance (GDPR), fraud ROI ($30M+), and safety system reliability (RideCheck). Engaged directly with HERE AG leadership and OEM partners (Audi, Mercedes-Benz) on autonomous driving program milestones. As Westover Labs CTO, all investor/client-facing communication and product positioning is owned at this level.
Build-vs-Buy & Vendor Management: Made strategic infrastructure decisions at Westover Labs — selected Cloudflare over traditional CDN/load balancer approaches, chose ONNX Runtime over managed ML inference (10x cost reduction), adopted Tailscale for zero-trust networking over VPN appliances. Managed vendor relationships with Apple, Cloudflare, GitHub, Expo, and AWS. At HERE, owned OEM partner technical integrations (sensor protocols, data formats, SLAs).
P&L Awareness & Budget: Bootstrapped Westover Labs with full P&L ownership — infrastructure unit economics, tooling costs, subscription revenue, contractor rates, and App Store margin. At Uber, anti-fraud program delivered quantified $30M+ annual savings — reported directly to senior leadership as a budget-positive initiative. Designed cost-optimized architecture at every level (Cassandra vs. managed DB, on-prem vs. cloud inference).
Compliance, Risk & Governance: Led ISO 9001 certification at HERE for safety-critical software (mapping vehicles on public roads) — authored QMS, led auditor engagement, and embedded process controls into engineering workflow. Built GDPR-compliant location data pipeline at Uber — partnered with legal and privacy engineering on data minimization, consent flows, and regulatory audit documentation. Privacy-by-design architecture at Westover Labs (no user data stored on inference servers).
M&A Technical Due Diligence: Led Postmates acquisition technology integration at Uber — assessed legacy system viability, defined integration sequencing, maintained service continuity, and drove compliant data deletion across distributed databases. Operated effectively across both acquiring and acquired engineering cultures during org merger.
Platform Strategy Across Business Units: At URBN, contributed to platform team serving Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, and Free People — understanding multi-brand platform architecture tradeoffs and shared-service design. At HERE, platform served multiple OEM partners and internal autonomous driving programs simultaneously. At Uber, Python Platform served hundreds of internal teams as a shared developer infrastructure.

Leadership Experience

Westover Labs / Neher Data Services — Berlin, Germany

Founder & CTO (Fractional Engineering Executive) · 2021 – Present

Operate as full CTO function for a German-registered software development company — owning technical strategy, organizational design, vendor relationships, budget, and board-level communication simultaneously.
Designed and operationalized an AI-augmented engineering organization: defined 12 specialized contributor roles (AI agent personas), established contribution protocols, built intent routing infrastructure, and created a knowledge management system that reduces onboarding cost for every subsequent engagement.
Made strategic build-vs-buy decisions across the entire stack: open-source ONNX models over managed ML APIs (10x cost reduction), Cloudflare Tunnels over traditional reverse proxy (DDoS protection + zero marginal cost), Tailscale over VPN appliances (zero-trust mesh, no hardware budget), and GitHub Pages + Cloudflare Pages over managed hosting (40+ sites at effectively zero cost).
Delivered two B2C iOS products end-to-end: concept, architecture, engineering, App Store submission, pricing strategy, and subscription monetization — operating as product owner and engineering executive in parallel.
Manage all vendor relationships at the executive level: Apple (App Store Connect, developer program, StoreKit 2), Cloudflare (DNS, tunnels, edge compute), GitHub (Actions, Packages, Pages), Expo (EAS Build), AWS (inference and storage fallback).
Built and maintain Fractional CTO consulting practice (westoverlabs.eu/consulting) — providing engineering leadership to early-stage companies lacking a full-time technical executive. Engagements cover technical due diligence, architecture review, build-vs-buy analysis, and team structure design.
Designed privacy-first, cost-optimized infrastructure: all inference ephemeral (no user data stored), Cloudflare edge for zero-trust public access, Tailscale mesh VPN for internal development and deployment — achieving production-grade reliability with near-zero infrastructure CAPEX.

Uber — San Francisco, CA / Remote

Staff Software Engineer · February 2021 – October 2022

Senior technical leader on Uber's navigation platform — one of the company's largest distributed systems (~10,000 nodes per DC), contributing to architecture decisions impacting 30M+ driver devices globally.
Led Postmates acquisition technology integration — assessed legacy system architecture, defined integration roadmap, maintained business continuity, and drove compliant data deletion strategy across distributed databases. Effective M&A technical integration leadership across two distinct engineering cultures.
Championed org-wide devpod adoption through simulation infrastructure — influenced engineering tooling strategy at the platform level, not just within immediate team scope.
Led critical GPS millisecond offset incident: diagnosed root cause across millions of devices, coordinated cross-org remediation, and communicated resolution status to senior technical leadership.

Senior Software Engineer — Python Platform (Office of CTO) · January 2019 – June 2020

Founding member of dedicated platform team chartered by the Office of the CTO — enterprise-wide Python 2→3 migration spanning hundreds of teams and 90%+ of production services.
Delivered org-wide technical transformation by designing dependency graph tooling, aligning migration sequencing across divisions, and building automation that achieved 93% service conversion at scale.
Contributed to regulatory compliance tooling for Uber's London market expansion — infrastructure supporting market-specific feature flagging required by UK transport regulators. Experience translating regulatory requirements into engineering architecture.

Software Engineering Manager — Location Platform · February 2018 – January 2019

Founded Uber's Location Platform — wrote team charter, defined technical strategy, set OKRs, made key hires, and built the platform from zero to production within a single year.
Drove executive-facing safety initiative: improved GPS+sensor data ingestion reliability from ~80% to 97%+, directly enabling RideCheck crash detection and safety feature launch.
Directed anti-location-fraud program — coordinated across trust & safety, data science, legal, and engineering to operationalize spoofing detection. Quantified and reported $30M+ in annual savings to senior leadership.
Built GDPR-compliant location data architecture — defined data minimization strategy, partnered with privacy and legal teams, and documented compliance posture for regulatory audit readiness.
Owned capacity and architectural strategy for globally distributed Cassandra infrastructure at 2–10M QPS — multi-region deployment, consistency model tuning, and long-horizon capacity planning.

HERE Technologies — Berlin, Germany

Software Engineering Manager · April 2016 – February 2018

Built and led Capture Systems Software engineering organization — scaled from 2 to 15 engineers across backend, frontend, mobile/tablet, DevOps, and embedded subteams. Owned headcount planning, hiring, team structure design, and budgeting for all engineering staff.
Directed delivery across 8+ concurrent programs: next-gen mapping rig (HT4), fleet visualization platform (Fleetvision 2), real-time data ingestion pipeline, ADAS prototyping, inventory management, OEM integrations, and route planning platform — each with distinct stakeholders, timelines, and technical requirements.
Led executive-facing program reviews with HERE AG leadership on autonomous driving milestones. Translated ambiguous OEM requirements into structured engineering deliverables and presented quarterly progress to senior directors.
Owned technical partnership strategy with Intel, Nvidia, Audi, and Mercedes-Benz — defined integration architecture, negotiated data formats and protocols, and represented HERE in joint technical design reviews.
Led ISO 9001 certification for safety-critical mapping software: authored quality management system documentation, defined process controls for software governing autonomous vehicles on public roads, and led external auditor engagement. Certification had direct commercial implications for OEM partnerships.
Made strategic build-vs-buy decisions across the capture stack: custom lambda architecture (Storm + Kafka) over managed streaming services, on-vehicle embedded software over commercial ADAS solutions, and in-house route planning platform over contractor-built legacy system.

Senior Software Architect · April 2015 – April 2016

Defined technical architecture for fleet data platform — designed lambda architecture using Apache Storm, Kafka, Elasticsearch, and PostgreSQL/PostGIS to handle 250M+ GPS events/day with real-time analytics.
Established engineering standards and architectural patterns adopted org-wide across Capture Systems program.
Architected "Weatherman" orchestration system — event-driven workflow for dynamic map reprocessing and QA across large-scale fleet data, enabling programmatic map quality improvement loops.

Postmates Inc. — San Francisco, CA

Senior Software Engineer 2 — Core Infrastructure · June 2020 – February 2021

Core infrastructure team — delivered 4x CI build time improvement (40–50 min → 10–15 min) through distributed test execution across Kubernetes pods, measurably improving engineering throughput for 100+ engineers.
Led Python 2→3 migration across 1M+ LOC monorepo with 3 coexisting Django versions — a complex multi-stakeholder technical transformation with active production risk management.
Experience operating within an acquired engineering organization during Uber's Postmates integration — understanding both sides of M&A technical transition.

Technical Depth & Architecture Breadth

Maintains active hands-on engineering practice — essential for credible technical executive leadership, architecture review, and M&A due diligence.

Education

MBA, Business Administration — Quantic School of Business and Technology, 2017