Derek Honerlaw is a Senior Engineering Manager based in Charlotte with over a decade of hands-on software experience and more than five years leading engineers and other managers. He excels at architecting scalable systems and driving enterprise modernizations, often blending AI-driven automation into validation and infrastructure strategies to deliver measurable business impact. Technical fluency spans Node.js, TypeScript, Java and related stacks, but he emphasizes adaptability and choosing the right tools for each problem. Known as a people-first leader, he builds psychological safety, restructures organizations to align strengths with business challenges, and focuses on growing resilient, autonomous teams. A former lead developer and VP of software at smaller organizations, Derek brings both startup grit and enterprise delivery discipline to complex, high-stakes engineering problems.
11 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science (BS), Computer Science, Bachelor of Science (BS), Computer Science at Florida State University
Bachelor’s Degree, Biology, General, Bachelor’s Degree, Biology, General at Daytona State College
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.