Michael Swanson

Resume

Michael Swanson

Biotech & clinical research engineering leader · AI agentic engineering · Raleigh, NC

Contact  ·  LinkedIn  ·  GitHub  ·  frictionlesscode.com

Summary

Engineering leader for biotech, clinical research and regulated medical device software, with deep experience building large-scale AI/ML, analytics and data platforms across SaaS and research environments. Combines hands-on technical depth with proven leadership to architect systems, scale teams, introduce AI agents into the delivery lifecycle, and deliver measurable business outcomes.

  • Biotech, clinical research & regulated software: 15+ years building systems for biomedical research, clinical trials and lab operations: LIMS/ELN, genomics pipelines, imaging analytics, lab robotics and GxP/HIPAA/FDA 21 CFR Part 11-compliant medical device software (SaMD).
  • AI agentic engineering: Led adoption of Claude Code and an AI development lifecycle (AI DLC) across 40+ engineers in a regulated clinical environment; built agents directly into the CI/CD pipeline for merge-request review, secret scanning, test-coverage gap detection, release-note generation and shared context.
  • Technical leadership: 17+ years of full-stack engineering and distributed cloud architecture, specializing in Python and C#. Large-scale data and AI/ML platforms, ELT pipelines, cloud cost optimization, and distributed workloads on AWS; Kubernetes, container orchestration, multi-petabyte data lakes, and platform direction for greenfield rebuilds (Temporal, Prefect) and multi-application cloud migrations.
  • Execution & team growth: 8+ years managing and scaling global engineering teams of 60+ through Agile execution and cross-functional collaboration; ran vendor evaluations and rollouts for OKR and value-stream analytics tooling.
  • Business impact: Multimillion-dollar cloud savings, platform modernizations and operational gains driven by OKRs and engineering metrics.

Experience

Clario · Raleigh, NC

Director of R&D Software Engineering Jan 2026 – Present
  • Built and scaled a 0 → 1 engineering organization for Clario's home blood pressure, spirometry and other digital physiology endpoint apps: regulated medical device software (SaMD) used in clinical trials.
  • Procured and rolled out Claude Code and an AI development lifecycle (AI DLC) across 40+ engineers in a highly regulated clinical environment, leading the team that built reusable patterns and guardrails for compliant AI-assisted delivery.
  • Introduced AI agents directly into the build pipeline: automated merge-request review, secret scanning, test-coverage gap detection, release-note/changelog generation and shared-context retrieval, extending AI DLC guardrails from the editor into CI/CD.

Xilis · Durham, NC

Senior Director of Engineering and IT Dec 2024 – Dec 2025
  • Deployed and maintained Python FastAPI inference services for DINOv2 vision embeddings on Modal GPUs, orchestrated with Prefect for reliable, reproducible large-scale image processing.
  • Migrated image-analytics orchestration from Argo to Prefect and integrated AWS Athena for query optimization, with all infrastructure as code in Terraform, cutting costs 50% and stabilizing ingestion into a 2 PB AWS data lake.
  • Architected and executed a major cloud refactor, migrating AWS EKS clusters to ECS Fargate and decommissioning idle resources, delivering 65% infrastructure cost savings.
  • Directed 0 → 1 development of a cloud-native LIMS/ELN platform (React, Python) for organoid cancer research: self-service scientific workflows, instrument and pipeline integration for assay execution, sample tracking, imaging, SNP testing and analytics, with AuthN/AuthZ via Okta (SAML/OAuth).
  • Partnered with lab operations and quality on GxP, CLIA, HIPAA and FDA 21 CFR Part 11 compliance, developing IT policies and governance for diagnostic assay workflows and LIMS data integrity.

ShareFile (formerly Citrix) · Raleigh, NC

Senior Engineering Manager Mar 2022 – Nov 2024
  • Head of Engineering for a $22M ARR low-code project-management product (Python, React on AWS) serving 1.7M users and 92B workflow actions annually: RabbitMQ/Celery, Elasticsearch, EKS, Aurora, Memcached, Redis, Harness.
  • Built a high-performing organization of 60+ engineers and 3 managers.
  • Set direction for a greenfield architecture (Node.js, Python, React) transforming ShareFile into a cloud automation platform via Temporal workflows.
  • Deployed a value-stream analytics solution integrating GitHub and Jira data, reducing engineering cycle time 32%.
  • Built a Workday → Power BI pipeline (Python) for hiring metrics, supporting a 23% increase in company-wide hiring targets.
Engineering Manager Apr 2021 – Mar 2022
  • Led two teams of 13 full-stack engineers to ship the company's first Microsoft Teams application (Node.js, React on Azure); owned PR review and architecture decisions.
  • Redesigned onboarding so 90% of new hires contributed to the codebase within five days.
  • Ran the OKR vendor evaluation and delivered an integrated OKR platform, formalizing the process for engineering.

Extron · Raleigh, NC

Software Application Manager Sep 2019 – Apr 2021
  • Managed 9 engineers and owned an Angular Design System roadmap for a cohesive cross-product UX, $15M in projected cost savings.
  • Reviewed code and UI implementations for design-standard and scalability compliance across products.
  • Mentored engineers through targeted training and coaching, raising team productivity 22%.
  • Built Power BI reports and Python tooling to scan Git repositories and track adoption of shared Angular components.

Syngenta · RTP, NC

Platform Lead Jun 2019 – Sep 2019
  • Owned delivery of an ML image-analytics SaaS platform (Scala, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, Elasticsearch on AWS ECS) with a 5-member vendor team.
  • Drove a 45% increase in daily active use through targeted initiatives, and cut infrastructure expense 78% moving to AWS.
Domain Architect Apr 2017 – Jun 2019
  • Initiated the company's first AWS data lake (Python, Glue, AppSync, Athena, Airflow), reducing predictive-genomics analytics costs 10× and earning recognition at an AWS conference.
  • Led a 10-engineer team defining architectural strategy, technology roadmap and microservices standards for 60+ global R&D analytics applications.
  • Directed AWS migration with data scientists, genetics leads and executives to optimize costs and lab operations, and owned the long-term cloud-native replatforming roadmap.
Solution Architect Feb 2016 – Apr 2017
  • Architected and led migration of 60+ LIMS and research applications (including STARLIMS and Clarity LIMS) to AWS for a company-wide digital transformation.
  • Launched bi-weekly global Tech Talks engaging 150+ employees in emerging technologies.
  • Built an IoT prototype (S3, Kinesis, Lambda, API Gateway, QuickSight) for remote field-sensor monitoring and an ELK operational dashboard for ecosystem health.

DuPont · Johnston, IA

Solution Architect Jan 2012 – Jan 2016
  • Led development and architecture of a $5M C#/.NET microservice-based robotic LIMS for Hamilton liquid handling, lab automation and vector design/construction, increasing lab throughput 800%.
  • Built and maintained CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, SonarQube, Artifactory) with unit and end-to-end test integration.
  • Presented architectural strategy at executive reviews and industry conferences.

ITA Group · West Des Moines, IA

Senior Full-stack .NET Developer Mar 2011 – Jan 2012
  • Engineered digital marketing platforms for Fortune 500 clients (ASP.NET/C#).
  • Implemented automated CI/CD (Jenkins, Sonar), raising deployment frequency to five times daily, and introduced test-driven development.

Early career

  • .NET Developer · Cylosoft, Ames, IA
  • .NET Developer · Emerson / Fisher Controls, Marshalltown, IA

Selected projects

AI Fitness Coach Active
  • MCP servers connecting Garmin, nutrition tracking and Tonal so an AI assistant can reason over real recovery, nutrition and strength data.

Full list at frictionlesscode.com/projects.

Skills

Programming & frameworks
Python, C#, JavaScript, Node.js, React, Angular
AI agentic engineering
Claude Code, AI DLC, agentic CI/CD (MR review, secret scanning, test-coverage gap detection, release-note generation), LLM-based tooling
Data platform engineering
Glue, Athena, Redshift, EMR, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, Spark, Airflow, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Elasticsearch / Kibana
Cloud infrastructure & SRE
AWS (EKS, ECS, Lambda, API Gateway, AppSync, SQS, SNS), Terraform, Docker, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Datadog
Analytics & visualization
Power BI, QuickSight, Tableau
Regulated & compliance
GxP, HIPAA, FDA 21 CFR Part 11, CLIA, medical device software (SaMD)
Leadership
Org design, hiring and manager development, technical strategy, OKRs

Certifications & presentations

  • AWS Certified Data Analytics (Specialty)
  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Associate)
  • AWS Certified Developer (Associate)
  • AWS Certified SysOps Administrator (Associate)
  • TOGAF 9 Certified
  • Event presenter, AWS Athena & Glue Summit: Syngenta's predictive analytics platform

Education

B.S., Computer Engineering Iowa State University