Public profile
Experience
Startup Engineering Leader | Founding Engineer | Product Systems & AI-Native Delivery
Career highlights
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Johnny Butler - Startup Engineering Leader | Founding Engineer | Product Systems & AI-Native Delivery
Startup engineering leader and founding-engineer type with 20+ years of experience turning ambitious ideas, messy operational reality, and business complexity into scalable software systems. I work at the intersection of product, engineering, delivery, and operations, shaping what should be built, why it matters, how it should work in practice, and how to get it delivered in a way that is fast, safe, and verifiable. More recently, I have focused on AI-native software delivery, using modern workflows, playbooks, and agent-style approaches to increase speed, preserve context, and improve execution without compromising quality.
Top summary points
- Head of Engineering (hands-on) - startups & scale-ups - Ruby on Rails
- End-to-end ownership: architecture -> delivery -> on-call -> stewardship
- Location: Sunderland, UK
Selected experience
Founder - Founding Engineer at Explore My Profile
2026-03 to present
- Building a product that turns static professional profiles into richer, more inspectable experiences for both people and AI agents
- I own the product end-to-end across concept, UX, onboarding, profile rendering, Notion-driven content workflows, public delivery, and the supporting integrations needed to make the system practical and usable
First Engineer -> Head of Engineering (hands-on) / Tech Lead at Materials Market
2021-11 to present
- Joined as the first technical hire and helped transition the business from agency dependence to an in-house engineering function
- Built and evolved the platform across pricing, checkout, fulfilment, invoicing, post-order operations, integrations, and reliability while staying hands-on across architecture, delivery, and operational tooling
Tech Lead, Ruby on Rails at Kudocs
2020-09 to 2021-11
- Led development of a LegalTech SaaS platform, owning delivery across product features, integrations, and operational maintenance while improving release discipline and engineering standards
Tech Lead, Ruby on Rails at Happity
2018-02 to 2020-09
- Led development of an e-commerce Rails platform spanning subscriptions, customer journeys, and complex back-office workflows, improving reliability, security, and integration maturity
Tech Lead, Ruby on Rails at Clixifix
2013-01 to 2017-09
- Led a small team building a SaaS platform for defect and repair management in construction, owning delivery across design, testing, deployment, support, and maintenance