Shane Sturgeon

The sturgeon is one of nature's great survivors: prehistoric, unhurried, essentially unchanged for over 200 million years. While currents shift and the water churns above, it holds its line. It doesn't chase the surface. It does its work in the deep.

That's the kind of engineering leader I try to be. Not the loudest voice in the room. Not the one chasing the next trend before the last one shipped. The one who shows up consistently, holds the team steady under pressure, and creates the conditions for other people to do their best work.

The name isn't accidental. It's a description of how I lead.

I wrote my first line of code in the early 1990s and haven't really stopped since, though what I build has changed considerably.

The early years were hands-on: enterprise applications, web development, consulting contracts for companies like Verizon and Bank One. I built hdtvmagazine.com in the early 2000s out of genuine enthusiasm for HDTV technology and a desire to learn something new. That site still exists, and I still use it as a proving ground for new technology. Some habits don't change.

Around 2013, I made a deliberate shift into engineering management. Not because I wanted to stop building things, but because I found I could create more impact by helping teams build things better. The leverage is different. A well-run team of eight engineers outperforms a poorly-run team of twenty. Every time.

Since then I've led engineering organizations at CareSource (Medicaid and ACA Marketplace systems serving hundreds of thousands of members across multiple states), Ad Hoc (Healthcare.gov and CMS platforms), Allegiant Airlines, and Bellese Technologies (CMS QMARS, a federal Medicare oversight program) — teams ranging from a handful of engineers to organizations of 25+, in environments ranging from fast-moving startups to FedRAMP-authorized federal systems.

The through-line: healthcare, Agile, and a stubborn belief that teams do their best work when they're trusted, equipped, and not buried in process overhead. I've passed on opportunities in other industries specifically because I'd rather do meaningful work.

I'm a servant leader. That's not a slogan; it's a description of where I believe a manager's job actually sits. I'm here to remove blockers, reduce friction, provide cover when the organization gets noisy, and make sure the people on my teams have what they need to do exceptional work.

I also believe in the force multiplier effect: the right leadership investment doesn't add to a team's capability linearly, it compounds it. Better tooling. Cleaner processes. Clearer ownership. Psychological safety to try things and fail fast. These aren't soft nice-to-haves; they translate directly into velocity, quality, and retention.

I play indoor soccer one to three times a week. I've been renovating my wife's childhood home since we bought it from her parents in 2019: a new roof, a 36×36 horse barn, a front porch, a back deck, a converted garage turned living space, a kitchen remodel, and an upstairs bathroom, with probably another five to ten years of projects ahead. Almost all of it done by hand.

I find the same satisfaction in framing a wall correctly that I find in a clean system architecture, getting the structure right so everything built on top of it holds.

I also run a home NAS and Docker lab, which is how I keep my hands in the technical side of things. And I've been running hdtvmagazine.com as a side project and technology sandbox since the early 2000s, which will tell you something about both my patience and my enthusiasm for home theater.