● Zach Colon/ engineering leader
AboutWorkNumbersPrinciples
Z.C. · CTO @ Lunchbox.io · since 04 / 24

I build platforms,
lead engineers,
and ship AI that
earns its keep.

14+ yrs leading tech·DISTRIBUTED ORGS, 4 CONTINENTS·still ships code
Status
Open to senior
engineering leadership.
responding within 24h
Based
North Carolina · USA
Remote · The Triad
Greensboro · High Point · Winston-Salem
Works EST · ships globally
Saved — Total
$2.5M+
Cumulative spend reduction through infra automation, server right-sizing, and process leverage.
Cycle Time — Δ
−63%
Quarter-over-quarter at Lunchbox. Process redesign + automation + flagged delivery.
Client Growth Absorbed
400%
Customer roster at Itsacheckmate, 2021–24. No emergency re-architecture.
Compliance · Regulated Industries
SOC 2 Type 2PCI DSS · Level 1HIPAA
Spearheaded Lunchbox's first SOC 2 Type 2. Led PCI DSS Level 1 re-certification, two years running. HIPAA-experienced from McKesson.
scope exec-led
Merge Freq
+56%
weekly merges, post-overhaul
Reports — Peak
~40
across multiple continents
Mentored
70+
engineers, decade running
AOV Lift
+25%
recommendation engine
AI in Prod
6
products shipped, not demos
Years
14+
leading engineering

What I bring.

05 practice areas · all in production
01ai

Applied AI, operationalized

I move AI past the demo. Recommendation engines that lift AOV, chatbots that scale support, regression-correlation tools that tell engineers which PR broke the build, sales-intelligence dashboards that surface revenue anomalies before the next QBR. Not experiments — production systems that pay for themselves.

  • Recommendation engine → +25% average order value
  • AI regression analysis → faster failure-to-cause diagnosis
  • CS knowledge tool → on-demand industry context per client call
02process

Process engineering

Engineering velocity is a system, not a vibe. I instrument it, find the bottleneck, automate the fix, and repeat. I treat developer experience as a product — measured, iterated, shipped.

  • 63% reduction in cycle time at Lunchbox
  • 56% increase in merge frequency
  • Feature flags, QA platforms, continuous delivery across teams
03remote

Distributed leadership

Remote-first isn't a perk — it's an operating model. I've led ~40 people across multiple continents with structured onboarding, async-first communication, and the kind of documentation that turns surprise into routine.

  • Up to ~40 direct reports across frontend, backend, QA, DevOps, Product, and PM
  • Onboarding programs that ship new hires productive in days
  • Career coaching, performance reviews, 1:1s — the unglamorous core of leadership
04infra

DevOps & infrastructure

Every server I've owned is reproducible, observable, and automated. Terraform, Ansible, Packer, CI/CD pipelines — and migrations done while the lights stay on.

  • Multiple zero-downtime migrations between cloud environments.
  • Entire infrastructure in code across multiple organizations
  • Auto-scaling container architecture for high-throughput services
05coach

Coaching engineers

I meet people where they are and give them runway to grow into roles they didn't think they could fill. The best work I've done is the team I'm not in the meeting for.

  • 70+ engineers mentored across a decade-plus of leadership
  • First-time devs to senior staff — same playbook, different chapter
  • Clear expectations, psychological safety, ruthless accountability
Operational record · 2012 → present

Fourteen years, six roles.

full record below
Lunchbox· Chief Technology Officer
Itsacheckmate· VP of Engineering
Adwerx· Tech Lead — Ruby / DevOps
Carolina Code Runners· Cloud Architect · DevOps · Web Dev
McKesson (MCK)· Web Application Developer V
Tax Management Associates· Web Application Developer
2012
2014
2016
2018
2020
2022
2024
2026
2024now
Chief Technology Officer
Lunchbox.io · Remote · NYC

Established new engineering processes: 63% cycle time reduction, 56% lift in merge frequency. Introduced AI into the fabric of the company.

20212024
VP of Engineering
Itsacheckmate.com · Remote · NYC

Led all software initiatives for a SaaS application on AWS.

20172019
Tech Lead — Ruby / DevOps
Adwerx · Durham, NC

Led developers building advertising tools for the real-estate industry on Rails 5.1.

20152021
Cloud Architect · DevOps · Web Dev
Carolina Code Runners · Raleigh, NC

Self-employed contract work — multiple clients

20132016
Web Application Developer V
McKesson (MCK) · Durham, NC

Built a first-of-its-kind clinical decision-support web service used by hospitals and oncology clinics nationwide.

20122013
Web Application Developer
Tax Management Associates · Charlotte, NC

First role out of school. Ruby on Rails 3.2, Redis, Riak, MySQL.

How I operate.

05 commitments · enforced
01

Build foundations that compound.

I make architectural decisions that pay interest for years — not the one that ships fastest this quarter and rots by the next.

02

The team is the product.

Hiring, coaching, the calibration of expectations, the design of the SDLC — those compound harder than any framework choice.

03

Stay in the code.

Executives who stop reading code stop understanding their leverage. I read PRs, write spikes, and unblock people directly.

04

AI as leverage, not theater.

If it doesn't change a workflow or a P&L line, it's a demo. I ship the ones that do.

05

Process is a product.

Measure cycle time, throughput, and developer happiness. Iterate on them with the same rigor as you'd ship a feature.

Hiring? Building something hard?

Let's talk. Hi, I'm Zach.

Replies within 24 hours · Mon–Fri · EST
© Zach Colon 2026 · zachcolon.meMBA — UNC Charlotte · BS — Barton CollegeBuilt quietly · maintained personally