Tim Schnell

Director of Engineering @elastic, previously @rackspace and a sundry of startups. Thoughts & opinions are my own. This is not the algorithm.

Experienced engineering leader with a demonstrated history of operating at both the strategic and tactical level, able to think holistically and tie the strategy to the delivery process. Establishes a culture of collaboration, mentorship and teamwork while balancing planning, velocity and quality.

Currently, lives in the suburbs of Austin, Texas with his wife, Tina, and 3 kids. In his spare time he enjoys indoctrinating his children into nerdy hobbies like video/board games, superhero movies and books.

Director of Engineering | Elastic, Remote

May 2019 - PRESENT

Currently managing the Kibana Analyst Experience team. Responsible for your favorite open source Analytics tools like Discover, Dashboard, Lens and Maps.

Co-founder | Subscription Box Kids, Austin, Tx

March 2016 - August 2023

Kid subscription boxes to inspire a love of reading, math, science, and more! Delivered monthly. We believe that all children are capable of reaching their full potential when given the proper tools and opportunities.

Acquired August 2023.

Head of Engineering | New Knowledge, Austin, Tx

October 2018 - April 2019

Grew the engineering organization from 12 to over 35 people, instituted a culture of consistent delivery, and worked with the rest of the leadership team to set the overall vision and goals for the team.

Key Contributions

  • Hired and managed an engineering organization of 35+ contributors
  • Measured and improved initial reliability of services from 0 up to 98%
  • Increased team velocity and software release cadence
  • Setup cross-functional teams in conjunction with Product

Head of Engineering | Cratejoy, Austin, Tx

August 2014 - October 2018

Helped grow the company from 10 to 70 employees over the course of 4 years. Worked directly with the CEO and Head of Product to set vision and plan execution strategy and was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the entire engineering organization.

Key Contributions

  • Hired and managed an engineering organization of 25+ contributors
  • Scaled the product from $0 to $10M ARR
  • Maintained an engineering turnover rate of less than 10%, creating workforce stability and a long term retention plan
  • Worked with the Head of Product to organize Objectives and Key Results, and hold teams accountable to quarterly goals
  • Set the Engineering Vision and executed against it with a long-term goal of solving our scaling issues proactively
  • Exposed complex engineering scaling metrics to leadership with an execution plan and budget proposal to solve problems permanently
  • Created a Site Reliability Engineering team to solve infrastructure issues, resulted in reducing outages due to database-scaling issues down to 0%
  • Implemented CI/CD which increased the number of code releases from 3 to 35 per week
  • Worked cross-functionally with Sales, Support and Marketing to interface with and retain our most valuable Customers by providing technical expertise, advice and solutions

Technical Advisor | Multiple Startups, Remote

February 2014 - September 2018

Worked with small companies to review technical implementations and plan strategic direction.

Software Developer | Rackspace, Austin, Tx

May 2013 - August 2014

Primary point of contact for the open-source Horizon/Heat integration for Openstack. Built a cloud orchestration resource topology using d3.js and worked with the community to include it in Openstack’s UI. Helped build a satellite front-end team for Rackspace at the Austin office responsible for interfacing with backend teams to gather requirements and productionize new open-source cloud technologies.

Senior Software Engineer | University of Texas, Austin, Tx

January 2009 - May 2013

Architected a system that collected and displayed information for Faculty, Students and Facilities across a variety of old and new technologies in order to provide the Executive leadership team at the Provost’s office an in-depth analysis for data-driven decision-making.

Key Contributions

  • Primary System Architect of a Python/Django Infrastructure to house all related Provost Information Systems
  • University-wide technical consult for the Python/Django adoption process
  • Primary technical lead for all Provost-related applications
  • Implement internet security enhancements for all Liberal Arts web applications, including Cross-site Scripting and Cross-site Request Forgery protection
  • Primary contact for administrative clients on several key client-oriented applications
  • Technical consult/trainer for team members on Python/Django languages

Activities

As a member of the Austin tech community for the entire duration of my career I am passionate about giving back to the community that has given me so much. Education is very important to me and I regularly give lectures for Hour of Code at high schools, guest lecture at UT and participate in demo days for coding bootcamps.