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Background

About Karl

This page is the arc behind the work: NASA Earth science operations at scale, aerospace mission software at Jacobs, and how I lead people through hard systems — where reliability, coaching, and judgment matter as much as the architecture.

View resume → Talk about leadership What I'm doing now

01 — How I lead

Staff influence becomes manager accountability when people outcomes are as explicit as system outcomes. This is how I work with engineers and stakeholders today.

  1. 1:1s that surface risk

    Career growth, feedback, and delivery risk in the same conversation — not three separate rituals. Blockers show up early enough to act.

  2. Tradeoffs made visible

    What we ship, what we defer, and what we refuse — so the team can protect focus without politics.

  3. Standards over heroics

    Raise the bar through coaching instead of becoming the bottleneck — PR discipline, Definition of Done, and reviews that teach.

  4. Stakeholder trust in plain language

    Partner with product and mission partners so trust survives roadmap pressure and surprise constraints.

  5. Team outcomes over personal touch

    Measure success by predictability and ownership — not by how much I personally touch.

02 — Worked with

  • NASA Earth science editorial and ops partners — Earth Observatory publishing at 1.5M+ monthly visitors, plus flood mapping under disaster urgency.

    SSAI / NASA Goddard

  • Aerospace platform teams shipping mission simulation and telemetry services — planning, DevSecOps, and release governance when mission risk is high.

    Jacobs

  • Hiring managers exploring Engineering Manager and Staff+ leadership for aerospace, defense, and federal mission software — technical depth that still coaches, standards that outlast heroics.

    Open conversations · 2026

03 — Experience

Software engineering leader with 20+ years building secure, cloud-native platforms for aerospace, NASA, federal, and high-assurance environments. Hands-on architecture, DevSecOps governance, platform engineering, Agile delivery leadership, and stakeholder alignment — so teams build, test, release, and operate mission-ready software when failure is expensive.

Current Role

Staff Aerospace Software Engineer

Jacobs  ·  Chantilly, VA

Sept 2025 — Present
  • Lead cross-functional engineering execution across cloud-native mission services, CI/CD pipelines, multi-repo delivery, release readiness, and integration risk management.
  • Guide team execution, onboarding, coaching, and delivery discipline while strengthening engineering quality, ownership, and accountability.
  • Coordinate multi-environment release readiness across isolated and integrated systems, reducing late-stage integration risk and improving baseline alignment and traceability.
  • Establish and enforce engineering standards — repo and branch governance, PR/review practices, Definition of Done, and documentation — to reduce integration risk across multi-repo and multi-environment systems.
  • Drive DevSecOps and release governance through CI/CD, automated testing, quality gates, and security checks to shorten feedback loops and improve system reliability.
  • Translate mission and operational needs into roadmaps and sequenced delivery plans, communicating status and tradeoffs clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.

Lead Software Engineer

SSAI / NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD

Dec 2017 — Sept 2025
  • Architected NASA's cloud-based Flood Mapping System on AWS, delivering near real-time, satellite-derived flood products to support disaster response. Case study
  • Built a high-performance file and metadata platform on Ceph, improving virtual directory mapping and accelerating discovery and access for large scientific datasets. Case study
  • Rebuilt NASA Earth Observatory's high-traffic web platform, supporting ~1.5M monthly visitors while improving performance, UX, and SEO. Case study
  • Delivered an automated content registry workflow, boosting data collection efficiency by ~60% and accelerating researcher access to new datasets. Case study
  • Implemented DevSecOps delivery with GitLab CI/CD, Docker, and Kubernetes, enabling automated deployments, repeatable releases, and reliable stakeholder approvals.
  • Led Agile delivery across teams and stakeholders, translating mission needs into roadmaps, sequencing dependencies, and driving consistent delivery.

Senior Software Engineer

InformedDNA

Washington, D.C.

Jan 2016 — Dec 2017
  • Architected and delivered a Laravel-based case management platform, reducing operational costs by $30K/year. Case study
  • Led CRM enhancements that improved retention and contributed ~15% revenue growth through better lifecycle workflows and reporting.
  • Built and optimized APIs to improve database efficiency, reduce operational overhead, and increase application performance and reliability.
  • Spearheaded platform upgrades and security process improvements, doubling incident response efficiency and strengthening operational readiness.

Senior Software Engineer

Ticomix, Inc.

Washington, D.C.

Jun 2012 — Mar 2015
  • Delivered SugarCRM solutions for 20+ clients (including Virginia Department of Transportation, Washington Redskins, and Kastle Systems), improving sales operations, visibility, and team productivity.
  • Drove execution discipline to cut backlog ~90%, improving delivery predictability, product quality, and customer satisfaction.
  • Built a lightweight opportunity-identification application that helped customers surface and prioritize new business opportunities.
  • Collaborated effectively on distributed teams — clear async communication, strong documentation, and reliable delivery across time zones.

Earlier Engineering Experience

1997 — 2012
Show 1 earlier roles

Sabre Corporation · Dante Inc. · Visitar Inc. · Verizon Business

Software engineering & principal roles · 1997–2012

Held software engineering and principal engineering roles across travel, enterprise CRM, telecommunications, managed security services, and large-scale client platforms. Built Java, PHP, CRM, telephony, and internal operations systems for enterprise clients including Comcast, Mastercard, Verizon/MCI, and global travel customers — including Finium, the multi-tenant managed-security platform that enabled a $105M acquisition. Case study Helped mature engineering practices through Scrum adoption, testing discipline, code quality, junior developer mentoring, and cross-functional delivery.

04 — Research

Co-author

GeoHorizons

Published online May 2026

A Web-Based High-resolution Global Water and Flood Mapping Platform

Peer-reviewed publication describing the Global Water and Flood Mapping System, a NASA-supported platform for high-resolution surface water and flood products derived from commercial satellite data.

F. S. Policelli, A. J. Kettner, K. Hill, and D. Maloney. GeoHorizons, 1(1), gh2025-7.

DOI: 10.1144/gh2025-7

05 — Technical Stack

Languages

Python TypeScript Java Bash

Cloud & Platform

AWS Docker Kubernetes Helm/OCI Cloud-Native Architecture

DevSecOps & Release

Bitbucket GitLab CI GitHub Actions CI/CD Quality Gates

APIs & Integration

REST/JSON OpenAPI/Swagger Service Integration Distributed Systems

Web & Application

Node.js React Vite Tailwind Laravel/PHP

Data & Search

PostgreSQL MySQL MongoDB Redis Elasticsearch/OpenSearch

Engineering Ops

Git Jira Confluence PR/Review Workflows Engineering Standards

AI-Enabled Engineering

Cursor GitHub Copilot Claude LLM-Assisted Development

06 — Credentials

20+

Years of Experience

1.5M

Monthly Visitors · NASA Platforms

$105M

Platform Acquisition Value

~60%

Efficiency Gained via Automation

Certifications

4 verified

PSM II

Professional Scrum Master™ II

Scrum.org

Verify credential

PSPO I

Professional Scrum Product Owner™ I

Scrum.org

Verify credential

PSD I

Professional Scrum Developer™ I

Scrum.org

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CSM

Certified ScrumMaster® (CSM®)

Scrum Alliance

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Education

Bachelor of Science, Computer Science coursework

University of Maryland

Associate of Arts, General Studies

Howard Community College

Project Management

Rutgers University

Beyond the work

Away from the terminal, I'm based in Washington, DC, where I write and release music (you'll find a back catalog on Discogs). I'm happiest with a hard problem, a whiteboard, and a team worth building with — and I care as much about mentoring the next engineer as I do about shipping the next release.