Phillip Roth
Technology leader with 14+ years building and scaling high performance cross-functional teams of technologists while architecting enterprise platforms serving millions of users.
Technology leader with 14+ years building and scaling high performance cross-functional teams of technologists while architecting enterprise platforms serving millions of users.
Experienced Technology Leadership
Technologist at heart with a proven track record of building and scaling both products and teams that deliver transformational business value. Successfully progressed from individual contributor to senior leadership roles, directing enterprise platforms serving millions while cultivating engineering cultures where technical craftsmanship meets strategic thinking. Known for creating collaborative environments that develop exceptional engineers, while continuously learning and staying ahead of emerging technologies to ensure teams build products that truly matter using the best tools and practices available.
Currently serving as Head of Product & Engineering at Puck, where I lead both engineering and product teams through complex technical modernization while driving significant business impact through improved conversion rates and reduced technical debt.
Puck • New York, NY • August 2024 - Present
As Director of Product & Engineering at Puck, I led cross-functional teams spanning product, design, data, and engineering to deliver innovative solutions for a premium digital media platform. I architected and implemented critical technical initiatives including semantic similarity systems using OpenAI's embedding API, A/B testing frameworks with Cloudflare Workers, and complex WordPress-to-Laravel integrations. My role combined strategic product management with hands-on technical leadership, overseeing subscription platforms, content management systems, and third-party integrations that directly impacted business outcomes. I successfully scaled engineering teams while maintaining deep involvement in architecture decisions and implementation details. Throughout Puck's growth and acquisition of Air Mail, I balanced technical excellence with business priorities, ensuring platform stability and feature delivery during periods of significant organizational change.
Forbes Media • Jersey City, NJ • Sep 2021 - Aug 2024
At Forbes Media, I progressed from Software Architect to managing a Data Products team that built and maintained critical APIs serving data across the entire organization. I led a team of engineers and consultants in delivering high-impact technical solutions, including a cloud-based Go API that handled 5M daily requests at 99.9% uptime while supporting $9M in annual revenue. I architected and oversaw a Go-based microservices platform using Google Cloud Functions, Firestore, and BigQuery that automated social media content distribution powered by machine learning, driving 20% of Forbes' total web traffic. Additionally, I managed the engineering efforts for an affiliate linking platform that generated over $60M in annual revenue through automated Amazon affiliate tracking and management. My technical leadership and business impact earned me selection for an expedited executive development program, where I worked directly with executive coaches while balancing hands-on architecture work with team mentorship, stakeholder management, and strategic planning.
John Hancock • Boston, MA • Mar 2019 - Aug 2021
As a consultant for John Hancock Life Insurance through Hawthorne Advisors LLC, I architected and built a complete contact center solution that supported up to $300MM in annual life insurance policy sales. I led a team of three engineers in developing a Twilio Flex-based platform with a React frontend, enabling 15 sales representatives to efficiently handle all incoming direct-to-consumer life insurance leads. I designed and implemented a centralized internal API using Laravel, MySQL, and Redis that consolidated business logic from five separate web and mobile applications, significantly reducing technical debt and engineering complexity. The platform included custom Tableau reporting dashboards that provided real-time operational insights and performance metrics. This greenfield project demonstrated my ability to deliver enterprise-scale solutions from concept to production, combining modern cloud telephony infrastructure with robust backend systems to drive substantial business revenue.
Giftogram • Parsippany, NJ • Oct 2016 - Mar 2019
As a single digit employee and Lead Software Engineer at Giftogram, I helped rebuild the company from the ground up, literally planning the new architecture over coffee at Dunkin Donuts before leading the technical execution. I managed a team of five engineers in developing a B2B digital gift card platform using PHP 7 (Laravel 6), MySQL, Vue.js, and React that generated $5MM in annual revenue during our founding year. I architected and implemented the entire AWS cloud infrastructure including EC2, RDS, S3, and CloudFront to support a high-traffic e-commerce platform capable of handling enterprise-scale transactions. I designed and deployed a fraud detection system using Lambda microservices to protect both the platform and our clients' investments. This experience showcased my ability to transform startup vision into scalable technical reality, combining hands-on development with team leadership and strategic architecture decisions that directly drove business success from day one.
Get the full picture of my experience and qualifications. Download my resume for detailed insights into my technical expertise and leadership journey.