Summary
David Sayles is a seasoned engineering leader with 14 years of experience building and scaling high-performing software teams, currently serving as Director of Engineering at MongoDB in New York. He progressed through technical and leadership roles at MongoDB—from Senior Software Engineer to Staff Engineer and Senior Lead—demonstrating a rare combination of deep hands-on engineering and organizational leadership. Previously he led product and engineering efforts at Neverware, where he moved from individual contributor to Director of Software, and earlier cut his teeth on embedded and hardware-adjacent projects at MakerBot. Comfortable at the intersection of systems, infrastructure, and product, he excels at turning complex technical roadmaps into reliable, production-grade systems. Fluent in Japanese studies and with a background in digital art from Union College, he brings cross-cultural communication and creative problem-solving to technical strategy.
14 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science Computer Science and Digital Art, Bachelor of Science Computer Science and Digital Art at Union College
Japanese Language Studies, Japanese Language Studies at Kansai Gaikokugo University
Japanese