Joe Ybarra
Freelance Technical Director & Engineering Delivery Leader
Executive Summary
Engineering delivery leader and hands-on technical architect with 20+ years leading platform transformations for businesses including Fortune 500 enterprises (Prudential Financial, PGIM, Capco). Based in Manhattan, I operate as a high-caliber freelance technical partner for agencies, modern tech teams, and venture-backed startups — setting technical strategy, designing robust system architecture, and embedding directly in your office or Slack to unblock critical delivery.
Professional Experience
20+ Years Enterprise SDLCDirector, Tech Lead — Digital Marketing
- • Led a $5M+ enterprise platform transformation, migrating the core digital presence to Adobe Experience Manager (AEM).
- • Drove release cadence from monthly to bi-weekly — 2× deployment frequency — via parallel branching and streamlined delivery governance.
- • Drove a 30% delivery velocity increase in AI-assisted sprints, championing agentic development workflows now scaling toward consistent team-level gains.
- • Established CI/CD pipelines and deployment standards for Microsoft Fabric, improving consistency, governance, and operational scalability.
- • Direct on/offshore cross-functional teams (15 engineers, QA, UX, product) across the full SDLC as the central orchestration point.
Principal Consultant & Tech Lead
- • Helped win the Adobe Experience Manager migration off Drupal/Angular — foundation of the $5M+ transformation — through technical advisory on complex regulatory requirements.
- • Scaled and led two Agile pods (9 each, 18 engineers) across engineering, QA, and product, delivering BAU, enhancement, and integration objectives.
- • Won multiple contract extensions by delivering consistently and strengthening long-term client trust.
- • Mentored engineers, raising delivery quality and building durable internal capability.
Director of Engineering
- • Progressed from frontend developer to backend engineer to Director of Engineering, growing into full ownership of technical strategy, architecture, and delivery.
- • Implemented a structured design-to-engineering handoff process that aligned design and development, reducing rework and improving delivery fidelity.
- • Introduced Scrum across delivery teams, bringing predictable cadence and clearer prioritization to multiple concurrent client engagements.
- • Directed and scaled cross-functional engineering, product, and design teams, owning delivery from discovery through production.
Founder & CEO
- • Founded and ran a software development agency for 8 years, owning all operations — sales, delivery, hiring, and P&L — scaling to a peak team of 5 and a best year of $200K revenue.
- • Delivered for clients across education, travel, manufacturing, food, and fine-art printing — including UCLA, Fox Rent A Car, and Tampico Spice.
- • Grew the business through repeat engagements and strategic partnerships built on consistent delivery.
Select Platform Work & Case Studies
Agentic Engineering Workforce
View Repo ↗A multi-agent software workforce that runs the full delivery lifecycle — planning, test-driven implementation, QA, and code review — coordinated through a GitHub project board with model-tiered cost controls.
Platform Modernization — AEM
Migrated a Fortune 500 digital presence off Drupal/Angular to Adobe Experience Manager, doubling deployment frequency from monthly to bi-weekly.
CI/CD on Microsoft Fabric
Established CI/CD pipelines and deployment standards for Microsoft Fabric, improving deployment consistency, governance, and operational scalability.
Focal55, Inc
Ran a software development agency for 8 years across education, travel, manufacturing, food, and fine-art printing — clients including UCLA, Fox Rent A Car, and Tampico Spice.
Core Competencies & Technical Capabilities
AI & Agentic Delivery
- › Claude Code & agentic orchestration
- › Multi-agent workforce design
- › Prompt engineering
- › AI-assisted SDLC
- › Model-tiered cost controls
Engineering Leadership
- › On/offshore team leadership & mentorship
- › Delivery governance & SDLC
- › Cross-functional collaboration
- › Executive & stakeholder alignment
- › Engineering culture development
Platform & Cloud
- › Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)
- › Microsoft Fabric & data platform
- › AWS cloud architecture
- › CI/CD & release engineering
- › Scalable system design
Full-Stack Development
- › TypeScript, JavaScript & Python
- › React & modern frontend
- › Backend development (Java, PHP)
- › Drupal, Contentful & headless CMS
- › Code review & test-driven development
Blockchain & Web3
- › Web3 technologies
- › Blockchain integration
- › Smart contract development
- › Decentralized applications (dApps)
- › Cryptocurrency platforms
Interested in working together?
Available for fractional leadership, architecture advisory, and technical sprint contracts.