Pat Cullen

Florida · Remote

I've spent the last decade building products and engineering teams at high-growth startups.

Right now (2026) I'm VP of Engineering at Nava Benefits, rethinking how benefits brokerages serve their clients.

Before that (2024–2026): CTO at YearOne, rethinking how teams measure what matters. 6,488 commits and 904 PRs in a year—more code than any other year of my career.

Before that (2018–2024): six years at Carrot Fertility, where I joined as engineer #3 and left as SVP Engineering leading 70+ people. Scaled revenue from $100k to $100M.

→ Introduced cloud practices at Rithum, stayed through IPO
→ Co-founded HoopDog — solo dev, full stack, hired interns who are now directors
→ Monitored power plants at GE Vernova — big data before it had a name

These days I advise founders and coach engineering leaders. Mostly on scaling teams without losing the culture that made them good in the first place.

Things I believe:

→ Trust scales better than process
→ The best tech choice is the one you can ship
→ Leaders who stop coding lose context

Going deeper:

I write about scaling teams and building products at Strategic Spokes and share AI-driven development insights on LinkedIn.

→ What's Your Engineering Strategy? — a tactical guide for engineering leaders
→ Building with AI agents — how I use Claude Code to ship faster

I've also spoken at conferences on engineering strategy and ethics in software development.

More about life outside work →

Let's talk