Blake Walters
Hi. I'm Blake!
I’m an executive product engineering leader with a customer-first, outcome-driven approach. Experienced in scaling engineering teams from seed to growth stages and driving strategic alignment between product development and business goals. Proven success leading engineering through hyper-growth, technology and platform transitions, and high-velocity execution. Passionate about fostering cultures of autonomy, accountability, and technical excellence.
Core Competencies
Executive Leadership
- Strategic vision for scaling technology organizations from startup to enterprise
- High-impact team building, mentorship, and cross-functional alignment
- Post-acquisition integration and investor/board-level communication
Engineering & Product Strategy
- Customer-centric product development across core engineering, platform, growth, and data domains
- Agile process design, roadmap planning, and executional rigor
- Bridging product, design, and engineering with business objectives
Operational Excellence
- Production readiness and reliability at scale (99.9%+ uptime)
- CI/CD automation, infrastructure cost optimization, DevOps practices
- Cloud-native architecture, microservices, security, and compliance
Technology Leadership
- Full-stack application design and architecture
- Data engineering, AI/ML product integration, and business intelligence
- Developer experience and tooling for high-velocity teams
Experience
Vice President, Engineering - Prefect
Led engineering through a phase of operational transformation, shifting focus from growth-stage scaling to sustainable profitability and operational excellence.
- Directed cross-functional teams (30+ ICs, managers, and directors) across product and platform engineering, sales engineering, and technical support
- Organized and led a team of 10 managers, directors, and other people leaders to effectively execute on organization-wide vision and initiatives.
- Maintained high compliance and operational standards, achieving a clean SOC 2 Type II audit with no qualifications
- Delivered key initiatives including Prefect OSS 3.0, asset tracking and data lineage, AI-driven FastMCP and FastMCP.cloud PaaS, and a revamped self-serve offering that generated $1M+ in ARR within 6 months
- Transitioned engineering org from ad hoc development to a disciplined agile model with strong accountability and predictability
- Restructured team composition and roles to align with evolving product needs and company strategy
- Achieved 99.9%+ uptime while reducing infrastructure costs via architectural modernization and technical rigor
Senior Director, Engineering - CircleCI
Scaled CircleCI’s engineering org from 50 to 250+ team members during a hyper-growth phase and turbulent, post-pandemic market.
- Built and led domains across core product engineering, growth, analytics, developer experience, and AI/ML product lines
- Owned initiatives including a full UI re-platform, GitLab integration, and the launch of the Insights data product
- Improved platform security, reliability, and observability; modernized CircleCI’s BI infrastructure
- Directed as many as 8 engineering teams (80+ team members) including ICs, managers, and directors
- Oversaw acquisition and integration of PoniCode, launching a VSCode extension with 80,000+ downloads
Engineering Manager - InVisionApp
Led a full-stack engineering team building collaboration and conversation tools within the InVision suite. Provided product and technical leadership, agile coaching, and cross-functional coordination. Mentored engineers and helped establish a performance-driven team culture.
Senior Software Engineer - HashiCorp
Employee #11 and lead front-end engineer across core enterprise products: Terraform, Vault, Nomad, and Consul. Drove the development of rich front-end interfaces for both open-source and enterprise offerings, shaping UX patterns and technical foundations for the growing engineering org.
Earlier Roles
- Senior Software Engineer - Big Cartel
- Senior Software Engineer - Viget Labs
- Staff Interactive Engineer - Crispin Porter + Bogusky
Education
University of Missouri - Columbia
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Minor in Mathematics