Neil NelsonEngineering leadershipResume

The person behind the work

I’m Neil. I build teams and software.

An engineering manager based in Calgary, Alberta, who combines people leadership, architecture, and hands-on problem solving.

For six years I led the engineering team behind Absorb Software’s customer data and integrations platform: scheduled imports and exports, a custom integration service, and customer data migration. Every new customer passed through systems my team owned, so reliability and throughput were not abstract goals. I hired, coached, and reviewed the engineers, planned the work with Product, and carried the risks and trade-offs to executives.

Before that I led software and hardware integration at Honeywell and a distributed development team at CannAmm. The common thread is taking systems that are coupled, slow, or fragile and making them simpler without stopping delivery.

My role at Absorb ended in a 2026 restructuring. I used the time to build CrowHub, a local-commerce marketplace now live in Edmonton and Calgary, from solution design through production operation. It is also where I worked out how to run AI-assisted delivery responsibly, which I now consider part of the job for any engineering manager.

What drives me is making complex software simpler, helping engineers grow, and shipping products that solve real problems.

Resume (PDF)Word version

Professional experience

Leadership grounded in delivery

Fourteen years across SaaS, industrial software, and operational platforms.

CrowHub

Jan 2026 – Present

.NET 10 · Next.js · PostgreSQL · AWS · Stripe

Founder, Product & Engineering

A local-commerce marketplace live in Edmonton and Calgary, built and operated end to end.

  • Designed, built, deployed, and operate a production marketplace: listings, reservations, Stripe Connect payments, messaging, and QR-confirmed pickup.
  • Used coding agents heavily for implementation and tests while personally owning architecture, security review, and release decisions.

Absorb Software

Feb 2020 – Jul 2026

.NET · React / TypeScript · AWS · Hangfire · SQL Server

Engineering Manager, Software Development

Led the engineering team behind Absorb LMS's customer data and integrations platform: scheduled data imports and exports, a custom integration service, and customer data migration.

  • Managed seven engineers through hiring, coaching, performance reviews, promotions, and career planning. Made four hires and promoted one engineer to Senior.
  • Owned delivery for the platform and a major data-migration initiative, aligning priorities, capacity, sprint execution, and PI planning with Product, and presenting risks and trade-offs to executives.
  • Nearly tripled customer import throughput and eliminated recurring memory-depletion failures through root-cause investigation, automated recovery, and health monitoring.
  • Helped the platform reach daily deployments by decoupling legacy components with NuGet wrapper packages and feature flags, coordinated with SRE and Operations.
  • Transitioned infrastructure ownership to SRE, moving two specialists onto that team while my team kept onboarding and reporting.
  • Recognized with two Best Team quarterly awards, plus Strategic Direction and Pathfinder recognition.

Honeywell

Mar 2014 – Jan 2020

C++ · C# / .NET · OPC UA · Qt

Lead Engineer III

Software and hardware integration, architecture prototyping, and technical team leadership for industrial products.

  • Led integration work across C++, C#, .NET, OPC / OPC UA, Modbus, PLC interfaces, Web API, and Qt, turning device requirements into implementable designs.
  • Built rapid prototypes to test architecture before full implementation; one approach cut estimated redevelopment effort by about half.
  • Designed unified deployment and configuration tooling, ran sprint ceremonies, and mentored engineers through design and PR reviews.

CannAmm

Jul 2012 – Feb 2014

ASP.NET MVC · SQL Server · Entity Framework

Technical Lead, Software Development

Led distributed development and QA teams for an operational business platform.

  • Coordinated delivery capacity, production support, technical standards, and Agile practices, and translated executive priorities into technical plans.
  • Improved performance, security, and hosting architecture for an ASP.NET MVC and SQL Server platform; modernized data access with Entity Framework.

Earlier: software development roles before 2012.

Technical foundation

Engineering capabilities

A .NET and AWS foundation, shaped by production ownership, team leadership, and products I’ve shipped on my own.

Engineering leadership

People management and delivery ownership

  • Hiring and team development
  • Performance and career planning
  • Agile / PI planning
  • Architecture reviews
  • Executive communication

Backend and integration

Hands-on and through the team

  • C# / .NET
  • ASP.NET / Web API
  • REST APIs
  • Hangfire and background processing
  • System integration

Frontend and product

Team oversight and independent products

  • React
  • TypeScript
  • Next.js
  • Product workflows
  • Stripe integration

Cloud and operations

Architecture, reviews, and production ownership

  • AWS
  • Docker
  • CI/CD
  • Health monitoring
  • Incident root-cause analysis

Data and performance

Imports, migrations, and query tuning

  • SQL Server
  • PostgreSQL
  • Data modelling
  • Query optimization
  • Large-scale import processing

AI-assisted delivery

Leading teams that use coding agents well

  • Agent-driven implementation
  • Review and guardrails
  • Test generation
  • Architecture exploration
  • Hugging Face Agents certified

Education and certifications

Credentials

Let’s connect

Let’s build something
meaningful.

I’m looking for an Engineering Manager role where I can grow a team, own delivery, and keep a platform reliable while it changes.

Email meConnect on LinkedIn
Calgary, Alberta · Remote across Canada