Founding engineer strategy
Available
Serving startups looking for consultations on hiring, product engineering direction, roadmap, tech stack, & service recommendations. Meet bi-monthly.
Kevin Doran @ Billiam
Full-stack developer • CTO of small team • From Minnesota ❄️ • Working globally 🌍
Services
Sourcing, interviewing, and hiring contract engineers
Available
Full service hiring of contract engineers. We source, interview, and recommend senior full-stack remote contract engineers. Mostly focus on the Americas.
Full build of software platforms
Unavailable
We build a platform for a startup as the founding engineering team. Limited availability as we aim for one or two at a time.
Experience Highlights
2017 - Today
CTO & Owner of Billiam, LLC
Minneapolis, Minnesota | Global
Setting tech leadership and direction for startups and owner-operated businesses. Writing a lot of code. Hiring out to peer-network of software talent. Loving every day of it. (Currently ❤️ the T3 / shadcn / Vercel / Inngest / Neon stack.)
2021 - 2022
Founding Full-Stack Engineer
Los Angeles, California
Helped take the engineering team from one to twelve as the first employee, revenue from mid six figures to mid seven figures, and seed funding to series a.
2018 - 2021
Engineering Lead
Berlin | Abuja
Engineering lead over an eight figure, three-year McKinsey & Company digitization project for a federal government.
2010
Education: BS Computer Sciences
UW-Madison
Graduate Course Project on Advanced Operating Systems under Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau.
Current Startups
Recommendations
"I had the pleasure of working with Kevin as our founding engineer at BlueCargo, where he made a lasting impact on our product and engineering approach. Kevin is a highly product-focused engineer, always anchoring technical decisions to customer needs and the broader product vision. This focus helped drive BlueCargo's product in a direction that was both strategic and user-centered."
Laura Theveniau
Co-Founder at BlueCargo (YC S18)
"Kevin is an experienced fullstack developer who understands unfamiliar business requirements quickly and can work autonomously under urgent deadlines. However, his most important quality is his professional and positive attitude which enables him to adapt quickly in new client's environment."
Lim Hoang
while Technical Staff @ Inflection AI
"I also want to thank Kevin Doran. He is the guy building the fabric of Fred and Res Ipsa. We hired him because he was super competent, easy to talk to, and just a nice guy."
"I worked with Kevin for several months when he first arrived at Bazaarvoice. I was very impressed with how quickly he learned the job and became a productive member of our team. But I was even more impressed with how quickly he jumped in to help with, and sometimes lead, initiatives to improve our processes and tools."
Mike Gilsbach
Senior Manager, Technical Account Management
"Kevin came to Bazaarvoice during a time of change and rapid growth. Quickly, he became a valuable team member and sought out opportunities to expand his knowledge and support his colleagues. With a drive to learn new things and a passion for problem solving - he is one of the most talented team members I've had the pleasure to work with at BV."
Kim Martinez
Services + Operations Manager