About Joe
With over 24 years in technology leadership, I’m Joe Harkins, dedicated to transforming ideas into impactful solutions. My career has spanned software engineering, product strategy, and executive roles where I’ve led teams to optimize platforms, drive business growth, and deliver customer-focused experiences—resulting in outcomes like a 25% conversion rate increase and $70k in weekly revenue gains.
Recently, my focus has expanded into making AI practical and accessible for a broad audience. I’m passionate about demystifying artificial intelligence, showing professionals and curious minds alike how it can solve real-world problems and improve everyday workflows. From enhancing productivity to automating tedious tasks, my goal is to make AI approachable and genuinely useful.
Alongside sharing these insights, I engage with an active community across social platforms, sparking discussions and providing guidance on weaving AI into daily tasks. Beyond content, I work directly with businesses to implement tailored AI solutions that streamline operations and create lasting impact. When I’m not immersed in tech, you’ll find me in the workshop, tinkering with woodworking, metal projects, or simply spending quality time with family.
Select Experience
3form
1 year, 5 months
VP of Enterprise Technology | 2023.06 - 2024.10
Summary
Led cross-functional teams in IT Operations and Software Engineering to drive strategic initiatives and optimize performance. Fostered collaboration across various business units, implemented process improvements, and guided the organization through significant changes, including an acquisition by Armstrong World Industries.
Impact
Transformed the click-to-order system, increasing conversion rates from 15% to 25% by refining user experience and integrating cross-functional feedback.
Enhanced the Quick Quote Tool (QQT), significantly boosting adoption among sales and estimating teams, and drove critical system improvements to completion.
Led SOX compliance and technology due dilligence initiatives during the acquisition by Armstrong World Industries, ensuring operational security and smoothly integrating systems and culture.
Fostered collaboration across IT and business units through servant leadership, driving cultural change and earning trust from factory floor staff to the CEO.
Optimized team structures and processes by categorizing work strategically, realigning resources, and improving alignment with business goals.
Technologies and Skills
- Leadership and Team Management
- Strategic Planning
- Process Improvement
- SOX Compliance
- Change Management
- User Experience Optimization
- Cross-functional Collaboration
- Enterprise Technology Solutions
Clearlink
7 years, 8 months
Senior Director of Software Engineering | 2019.03 - 2023.06
Summary
Oversee multiple product-oriented software engineering teams. Provide strategic insight in technology to executive leadership and peers. Handles financial and administrative processes for teams. Manages Directors and Managers. Coaches teams in creation of software standards, mentoring practices, and fostering ownership of systems.
Impact
Initiated ecommerce product that allows customers to schedule online orders, leading to an increase of $70k in incremental weekly revenue.
Focused teams on ownership of production software by implementing application and infrastructure observability and issue post-mortem process, leading to lower Change Fail Rate and faster Mean Time To Restore.
Restructured team compositions to match business, product, management/individual contributor ratio, and skill/need while maintaining $4M annual salary budget.
Led IT and Software consolidation project that resulted in reduction of $1M annual cost.
Technologies and Skills
- Python
- New Relic
- AWS (ECS, EC2, S3, CodePipeline, Route 53)
- Spreadsheets (Excel and Google Sheets)
- Office / GSuite
- Atlassian Suite (Jira, BitBucket, Confluence)
- Agile Leadership
Director of Software Engineering | 2018.06 - 2019.03
Summary
Directly responsible for a 15-person engineering team of all skill levels working on revenue generating projects and systems. Teams created email and chat channels services used by all marketing efforts at Clearlink. Provided strategic insight to executive leadership for several technology initiatives, including redeveloping a core CMS and re-organizing the entire ~100-person IT department.
Impact
Reorganized software engineering teams into product focused teams, leading to better alignment with business initiatives, reduction of cross-department prioritization meetings, and increased software engineering ownership.
Email and chat product teams built and maintained software services that led to ~$100k incremental weekly revenue.
Chief architect on a CMS system that provided an 80% improvement in production timeline.
Guided teams in creation of career development guidelines, resulting in higher job satisfaction of individual contributors.
Technologies and Skills
- Python
- Spreadsheets (Excel and Google Sheets)
- Office / GSuite
- Atlassian Suite (Jira, BitBucket, Confluence)
- Docker
- Agile Leadership
Software Engineering Manager | 2017.11 - 2018.06
Summary
Led team of junior and intermediate engineers in web application development. Improved communication with Marketing departments by building relationships with senior leadership. Help introduced mob development as a technique to Clearlink. Established code workshops with developers to enhance skills.
Impact
Formalized SDLC that included peer code review and required critical path unit tests, creating a culture of engineer ownership and reducing Change Fail Rate.
Implemented and trained pair and mob programming techniques, leading to increased engineer engagement and reduced overall lead time for changes.
Architected several MarTech applications that reduced marketing effort for campaign management and creation.
Led migration from SVN to git software version control, greatly reducing source code management time spent by engineers.
Technologies and Skills
- Go, Python, PHP, Javascript
- SQL and Database Design
- Git and SVN
- Docker
- Spreadsheets (Excel and Google Sheets)
- Office / GSuite
- Atlassian Suite (Jira, BitBucket, Confluence)
Lead Developer, Marketing Technologies | 2016.11 - 2017.11
Summary
Management level, individual contributor role that provided senior level consulting to the business, software design and system architecture skills, and coached team members in programming best practices.
Impact
Designed and created phone rotation API, in Go, that manages hundreds of thousands of toll-free telephone numbers, tracks calls, and routes to inbound IVRs.
Leveraged above phone rotation API to renegotiate a telephony contract, leading to a $4M reduction over 3-years in cost.
Won Employee of the Year
Technologies and Skills
- Go,Python, PHP, Javascript
- SQL and Database Design
- Git and SVN
- Atlassian Suite (Jira, BitBucket, Confluence)
XMission
4 years, 9 months
Product Manager, Web Hosting & Senior Software Engineer | 2012.02 - 2015.10
Summary
Worked with a team of developers and system administrators in the creation of a next generation cloud hosting service that included system integration utilizing a variety of complex APIs. Developed and implemented best practices for managing external client projects, including web application and site development, migration processes, and high-value technical support. Assisted in building marketing plans for products, including data driven decision-making through sales funnel analysis and market research.
Technologies and Skills
- Python, PHP, Javascript
- HTML/CSS
- SQL and Database Design
- Git
Full Experience
My (mostly complete) job history can be seen on my LinkedIn page.
Education and Training
Bachelor of Operations Management, University of Utah
Analytical degree aimed at developing a scientific understanding of business process management. Course work included Lean/Six Sigma, Project Management, Practical Management Science, Statistics, etc.
Certified Scrum Product Owner, Certified Scrum Master
Braintrust, 2019
Six Sigma Greenbelt
University of Utah, 2012