Michael Dacar

Work Experience

Manage 2 teams of 10+ Software and Quality Engineers responsible for enterprise integrations and backend operations; modernized systems and processes, empowering teams and enabling them to deliver projects in a high-growth start-up environment
Collaborated with Product Management to new enterprise feature, generating over $2M annually
Established trackable quality metrics aligned with the customer experience and processes to collect and report on them allowing the organization to improve overall quality for the platform area

Led 14 teams of ~100 Software and Quality Engineers and Managers across 6 countries; reported to the Chief Technology Officer
Oversaw efforts to consolidate 14 different integration systems into 1 that met the needs of all Cision products saving ~$3M in vendor fees and increasing the reliability and scalability of systems
Transitioned an $80M product to a stable, long-term support structure by integrating it more tightly into wider company support network
Performed due diligence to support the successful acquisition of a government relations product and led the development team in the process of separating it from the product portfolio
Influenced senior leaders to disengage efforts to upgrade a major component of MyGorkana with no clear value to the company, saving millions of dollars and reducing risk given the age of the product

Managed 4 Engineering Managers with an organization of ~50 software and quality engineers in the US and offshore supporting 8 products totaling ~$400M in revenue
Led the transition of development teams to support a new flagship product while maintaining support for the current product and the majority of Cision customers
Retained a top QA engineer interested in transitioning to development, coaching him on development processes and practices

Managed 36 developers in 5 countries supporting the company’s flagship product generating $250M in revenue annually; maintained 100% application uptime
Oversaw the SDLC for 7 Agile teams including continuous integration/continuous deployment, unit testing, full automated test suites and production releases every 2 weeks with no down time
Worked with the CTO & VP of Software Engineering to develop product roadmaps and advocated for the alignment of resources to support goals and timelines
Organized hackathons to re-engage developers with the product and the organization and to drive innovation; several initiatives to improve customer experience are now included in the product roadmap
Advocated and gained approval for the creation of 2 new positions, creating a defined career path within the organization leading to the retention of high performers in a competitive market

Acted as technical lead and Scrum Master, working with product management to plan and execute day-to-day activities of the team
Led a team of developers and QA engineers in the redevelopment of Cision’s main platform; launched the application 12 months ahead of schedule
Improved email delivery from 50% - 90% and speed from several hours to minutes; oversaw fault tolerant design, guided developers through implementation, and coached product managers through the migration
Streamlined the customer provisioning process allowing for feature customizations with no code changes; eliminated system failures and reduced risk

Oversaw the adoption of Scrum processes; improved project planning and increased awareness of priorities and schedules
Led a team of 4 developers in the analysis, design, development, and support of a redesigned policy management system that reduced timelines from 4 days to 8 hours; migrated data from the previous system with no down time
Re-built the company website to allow customer payments through the web; online payments now account for 80% of revenue