Engineering Leader & Technical Cofounder
I build leverage in operationally complex businesses.
Software that improves business economics. Platforms that eliminate recurring work. Teams that own outcomes.
Took over a customer-incentive program that paid for 100% of offered gift cards despite roughly 53% redemption. Recognized the breakage opportunity and built a just-in-time fulfillment flow that purchased cards only at redemption, saving approximately $1.28M over two years.
Built and rolled out an AI support platform using GraphQL, Amazon Bedrock, Vercel AI SDK, and Node.js. We started with our most complex workflows that consumed 10–15 minutes of representative time and resolved more than 75% of conversations in targeted support categories.
Built a self-service platform that replaced dozens of one-off Lambda exports, making new authorized production MongoDB sources as simple as a YAML change and giving Data Engineering, Data Analytics, and other teams access to historical snapshots or live resumable streams for the first time.
Outside of work I’m usually with my golden retriever, hiking in the Adirondacks, or making Neapolitan pizza with a dough recipe that has become needlessly elaborate .
Joined Verizon through its acquisition of Starry. I continue leading Starry’s engineering and software work while building tools and systems to turn Verizon’s early fixed-wireless MDU deployments into repeatable planning, deployment, and operating workflows.
Built foundational systems across billing, customer accounts, support operations, and internal data access. Owned roadmap, architecture, delivery, operations, and vendors; led a 15-person organization at peak, including two managers, and hired and managed 25+ engineers.
Led web and TV product engineering as Aereo grew to nearly 100,000 subscribers; built an early production JavaScript MPEG-DASH implementation on Media Source Extensions.
Built a browser-based CMS that replaced a restrictive licensed desktop product, saving $250,000+ annually and reducing data-entry time by roughly 80%.
A small selection of interactive demos showcasing some of my open-source work.
Stream audio directly from IndexedDB for multi-track applications without loading entire tracks into memory.
Fast, lightweight, extensible message framing over persistent byte streams.
A small music synth and sequencer using the Web Audio API. Built for JS13k.
Multitrack mixing in JavaScript with the Web Audio API.
If you want to talk about engineering, software, pizza dough recipes, or whatever you’re building, reach me at kennis84@gmail.com, or find me on GitHub and LinkedIn.