Ian Ornstein is a product-minded engineering manager with 12 years of experience helping organizations modernize legacy systems and ship cloud-native software faster than they expected. He combines hands-on full-stack development (Java/Spring, Kotlin, TypeScript/React and event-driven architectures) with people-first leadership—mentoring engineers from junior to staff, running feedback-driven workshops, and designing onboarding exercises like “pair stairs.” Ian has a strong consulting background across startups to Fortune 100s, delivering high-impact projects such as pandemic-era health-pass systems and rapid market-enabling apps, and he repeatedly shortens feedback cycles through pragmatic automation and CI/CD. He focuses on cross-discipline collaboration, equitable team practices, and measurable improvements (e.g., freeing leadership time with internal tooling and improving designer allocation). Colleagues know him for inventing practical engineering processes and synthesizing exit interviews into organization-level changes. Based in the Chicago area and Berkeley-educated, he thrives on turning messy legacy constraints into resilient, future-proof products.
11 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Computer Science, Alumnus, Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Computer Science, Alumnus at UC Berkeley
High School and Middle School, High School and Middle School at Chadwick School
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.