Career Experiences

Tech leader solving real-world problems with AI/ML, computer vision, and spatial computing. Scaling tech products and teams for over a decade.

Justin Bowen is a software and business leader with over a decade of experience helping startups turn their dreams into reality and building open source R&D projects. Technical specializations include machine learning, software architecture, database scaling, and scaling Ruby on Rails, Python, and computer vision applications. Business specializations include global remote team leadership, mentorship, aligning product with business goals, fundraising, and technical due diligence (for $100M+ investment rounds and acquisitions). Justin is also a regular speaker at RailsConf, RubyConf, and other technical conferences and events.

nSight Surgical AI

nSight Surgical AI

Director of Engineering

2022 - present

Remote

Leading team developing CPU-accelerated ML/DL/AI computer vision systems for hospitals across the US, with research in partnership with Stanford Healthcare. Ensuring real-time data processing on-premise at hospitals and in the cloud. Built data processing pipeline used for cloud training and real-time inference.

CTO Consultant

2021 - present

Remote from San Francisco, California

Led tech due diligence for $100M+ venture capital and private equity fundraising rounds and acquisitions. Audited businesses, teams, processes, and technology. Provided comprehensive reports to stakeholders to assess and mitigate risks while managing technical expectations. Advised and led on the integration of business and products post-acquisition.

CTO Consultant

2018 - present

Remote

Launched a startup consulting firm with my now-wife to help early-stage companies with everything from brand development and messaging to defining their product requirements and designing/building their MVPs.

CTO Consultant

2018 - 2021

Remote

For musicaloverture.com I built a real-time audio/video collaboration platform for musicians to practice and perform with the lowest possible latency. Managed Mesh-WebRTC implementation. Integrated Twilio API TURN/STUN services and Twilio Video SDK. Developed a Mesh-WebRTC implementation for free peer-to-multi-peer group audio/video call experiences.

GreenThumb IO

GreenThumb IO

Founder

2016 - 2020

Remote

Combining smart cameras, AI, and IoT technology to fundamentally transform the cannabis industry from seed to sale.

CTO

2017 - 2018

Remote, San Francisco, California and Dublin, Ireland

Grew global remote team from 1 to 8 engineers, scientists, and designers to deliver cutting-edge agtech products to market (drone analytics for field crops and dairy barn computer vision). Lead tech due diligence to close Series B fundraise with Cargill Animal Nutrition.

Director of Engineering

2016 - 2017

Remote, San Francisco, California and Dublin, Ireland

Grew a Series A team to deliver a drone mappping and analytics platform to market and Lead the product design, R&D, engineering, and testing of the Dairy cow computer vision platform.

PINSTOP

PINSTOP

Cofounder, Director of Engineering

2016 - 2017

Remote, San Francisco, California and Tokyo, Japan

Designed and developed a custom itinerary mapping platform plus travel experience recommendation engine for use by elite concierge teams (including the Grand Hyatt and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Tokyo).

ZALA

ZALA

Momentage

Momentage

Lead Software Engineer, CTO

2014 - 2016

Remote

Lead the development of a short-form multimedia sharing platform. Designed a high-throughput media uploading service with node.js for handling file uploads to S3.

Banjo

Banjo

Lead Senior Software Engineer

2012 - 2014

San Francisco Bay Area

Independently built geocoding and data processing platform used to raise $150M. Built event detection system using advanced geo information systems to index social media content and determine what events were happening where, using geo queries on indexed polygons of all buildings and administration boundaries in the world. Built geo-coding microservices that handled 10s of millions of requests each day.

Lead Procuct Engineer

2010 - 2012

San Francisco Bay Area

Responsible for network security, services and systems reliability, software development, and support. Design, build, and maintain Rails web applications that compliment a software suite of Adobe Flex/Flash Builder Air desktop apps.

Software Engineer

2008 - 2010

San Francisco Bay Area

Maintained the registration and reporting application using Java and MS SQL, while handling mass emails to sites. Used Ruby on Rails and MySQL to develop new web interfaces designed to increase efficiency by improving the user experience. Continued advanced responsibilities of Technical Support and system administration.

IT Technical Support, Windows Systems Administrator

2005 - 2008

San Francisco Bay Area

Assured the availability of the testing service to over 300 globally distributed testing sites. Maintained servers and testing center network via telephone and on call support on weekends. Everyday tasks ranged from simple software support to assisting in the installation and configuration of small networks at the testing facility, by phone. Also helped maintain and administrate Microsoft SQL and Windows Server environments.