1·800·HEMNES Denver, Colorado Line open

EVP of Engineering · AdCellerant · Denver

JONATHAN HEMNES

I run engineering at AdCellerant — software, cloud and security, compliance, and QA.

Before that, VP of Engineering at Only Sky and at Travelers Haven. I started out in QA and came up through full stack engineering, and I still write code.

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How I lead

  • Measure the system, not the people

    Lead time, deploy frequency, change failure rate. DORA data moves the conversation off who is slow and onto where the pipeline is stuck — which is almost always somewhere nobody was arguing about.

  • Automate the work that repeats

    Custom agents now carry a real share of the operational load. The point was never the technology. It was giving engineers back the hours that went to lookups and handoffs.

  • Compliance is engineering work

    SOC 2 Type I and II, then ISO 27001. Two audit programs taught me that controls belong in the pipeline, not in a spreadsheet assembled the week the auditor arrives.

  • The org chart is a system design

    Team boundaries become interface boundaries whether or not anyone planned it. Better to draw them on purpose, redraw them when the business moves, and build hiring and career paths that hold the shape.

  • Engineering belongs in the deal early

    Enterprise buyers ask about security posture, integration, and roadmap long before anyone signs. Better to answer those in the room than inherit the commitments afterward, so I join deals early and stay through close.

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Selected work

  1. EVP of Engineering AdCellerant

    2020 — now

    Lead engineer, then Director of Applications, then VP, now EVP — same company, four jobs. The work today is platform strategy, the AI roadmap, and keeping a growing engineering organization healthy. I also work enterprise deals alongside the revenue team, from early scoping through security review and close.

    • We stood up the AI automation practice — ADK, Vertex AI, and custom agents pointed at real operational workflows.
    • We took the company through SOC 2 Type I and II, then ISO 27001 — and built the cloud and security governance to keep them.
    • We rebuilt the SDLC around continuous delivery, automated testing, and observability, with DORA numbers to keep us honest.
    • We restructured as the company scaled, and rebuilt hiring and talent development to keep up.

  2. VP of Engineering Only Sky

    2019 — 2020

    Engineering leadership for a venture-backed B2B platform serving the global mountain destination industry.

    • We scaled the platform to partners across the US, Europe, and New Zealand.
    • We did the performance, reliability, and data work that fast growth demands.

  3. VP of Engineering Travelers Haven

    2016 — 2019

    Arrived as a software engineer; left running engineering, product, and the HAVN team.

    • We set architecture standards and rebuilt the SDLC — career paths included.
    • Hands-on across Ruby on Rails, Angular, Vue, and React the whole way.
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Where I go deep

Executive leadership
Organizational design · Technical strategy · Engineering operations · Cross-functional leadership · OKR execution · Enterprise deal support
AI, data, and automation
AI agents (ADK, LangGraph) · RAG pipeline architecture · Vertex AI · BigQuery and Looker modeling · ML-enabled product capabilities
Compliance and governance
SOC 2 Type I and II · ISO 27001 · Cloud security governance · Security and risk management
Architecture
Scalable platforms · Microservices · TypeScript · Node.js · React · Ruby on Rails · Python
Delivery and quality
Continuous delivery · Automated testing · Observability · Performance engineering
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Background

MBA
University of Denver, Daniels College of Business
BS
Mechanical engineering, University of Denver (math minor)
Earlier
S&P Capital IQ · FoodServiceWarehouse · TalentKode Sports
Board
Central Park Communities, 2014 — 2021
Mentoring
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Colorado
Languages
English · French, professional working
Off the clock
Motorcycles, long routes, and a camera
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Direct lines

Stuck on an org problem, standing up an AI practice, or hiring an engineering leader? Email is the fastest way through.