James Thigpen
Interim Director Of Engineering - Data Teams
Billings, Montana, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolJames Thigpen is an experienced engineering leader with 16 years building resilient, high-performance distributed systems and data platforms across startups and scale-ups. He has led organizations through mergers, layoffs, and rapid growth to deliver high-availability cloud infrastructure, streaming and batch data migrations, ML ops recoveries, and measurable cost reductions. Currently interim Director of Engineering for Data Teams at TaskRabbit and Head of Engineering at Clora, he blends strategic org design—centralizing data reporting and embedding product accountability—with hands-on delivery of DBT/Dagster/Snowflake-based analytics stacks. James is known for stabilizing off-track ML projects and instituting engineering hygiene, observability, and OKR-driven rhythms that improve predictability and cross-functional alignment. Based in Billings, Montana, he pairs a research-rooted MS in Computer Science with practical experience shipping large-scale web and marketplace platforms. Colleagues credit him for coaching through ambiguity and for turning operational improvements into business-impacting outcomes.
16 years of coding experience
15 years of employment as a software developer
MS Computer Science, MS Computer Science at University of Houston
Stackoverflow
869reputation
49kreached
5answers
19questions
Github Skills (62)
zeromq8
python8
scale8
infrastructure8
infrastructure-management8
infrastructure-as-code7
package-repository7
configuration-management7
amazon-redshift7
iot7
saltstack7
docker7
salt7
remote-execution7
rake6
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
roverdotcom/zero-downtime-deployments
Dec 2013 - Dec 2013
Full stack SaltStack configuration for Django with the help of Vagrant.
Contributions:17 commits, 1 push in 1 day
yesawoo/feed-me-seymour
Dec 2024 - Jan 2025
ATProto Feed Generator
Contributions:94 pushes in 23 days
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