Executive Engineering Leadership
- Governance and stop-ship authority
- Global program execution
- Capital allocation and risk mitigation
- Cross-functional reorgs and operating-model change
Robert McKean
Executive Technical Advisor | Fractional CTO | Engineering Execution & AI Architecture
Executive technical authority with production accountability across global engineering organizations. Advises executive teams on engineering execution risk, AI feasibility, and architectural integrity prior to scale.
Leads defined-scope AI and systems initiatives from strategic assessment through validated implementation, restoring architectural discipline, measurable outcomes, and production reliability.
Technical and Leadership Capabilities
AI & Machine Learning Architecture
- PyTorch, TensorFlow, CUDA
- Data Science engineering and AI model architecture
- Training pipeline design and AI feasibility evaluation
Systems & Software Architecture
- Python, C/C++, Windows desktop systems
- PyQt and secure file architectures
- Automated validation frameworks
Professional Experience
Independent Executive Technical Advisor
- Advise executive leaders on AI feasibility, system architecture, and execution risk.
- Perform structured technical assessments and define implementation paths prior to scale.
- Identify data, model, risks, and organizational constraints impacting production viability.
Founder & Principal Architect, Global Active - Key-Person Risk Brief
- Key-Person Risk Brief is a source-grounded knowledge-recovery system that turns a key person's email, LLM histories, attachments, and work records into verifiable executive briefs and queryable evidence.
- Founded and built Key-Person Risk Brief, a secure intelligence workflow for recovering critical knowledge, risks, handoffs, and dependencies from a key person's scattered work records.
- Solely designed and engineered BrainDump, the end-to-end evidence engine behind KPRB: intake, attachment extraction, atomization, retrieval, citation checking, coverage review, and hosted query workspace.
- Built a delivery-blocking verification layer where every material claim must trace to source evidence, quotations are checked against originals, invalid citations fail the brief, and coverage review prevents polished summaries from masking missing evidence or unresolved risk questions.
- Architected the model-layer trust posture on Amazon Bedrock with account data retention set to "none," backed by a fail-closed retention preflight before any client records are processed.
- Productized KPRB for sensitive single-client engagements with authenticated hosted workspaces, encrypted per-engagement processing, app-side rate limits, provider spend caps, sensitive-material screening, and deletion closeout.
- Validated the workflow end to end on synthetic client corpora and a public live demonstration, proving source-grounded recovery across messy, multi-format knowledge records.
Independent Systems Architect & Developer - Secure File Portal System (Windows)
- Architected secure file isolation eliminating user-facing encryption complexity without administrative privileges.
- Designed enterprise-grade file transfer architecture ensuring verifiable, lossless delivery under real-world Windows conditions.
- Established failure-mode testing and iterative hardening to prevent corruption, partial transfers, and data loss.
- Directed AI-assisted implementation under strict architectural control and regression validation.
- Implemented 300+ automated validation tests enforcing deterministic system behavior.
- Delivered full Windows desktop application with tray interface and drag-and-drop workflow.
Microsoft Corporation - Technical Project Manager 4 (Contract through Zensa LLC)
- Held end-to-end system accountability for RGB and IR camera platforms for Microsoft Surface devices.
- Directed cross-functional execution across hardware, firmware, optics, software, and global manufacturing.
- Owned production readiness governance, leading executive design reviews and structured risk mitigation prior to shipment.
- Resolved cross-discipline integration conflicts impacting production release.
- Delivered multiple camera platforms to production on schedule and within budget across US, China, South Korea, and Finland engineering programs.
- Defined biometric and sensor roadmap influencing next-generation Surface products.
Independent AI Research and Development - drums2midi (Drum Audio-to-MIDI System)
- Executed the full machine learning lifecycle from problem definition through dataset engineering, model architecture, training, and evaluation for a drum audio-to-MIDI system.
- Achieved sub-3ms timing resolution from raw audio to structured MIDI.
- Designed and curated 9.5 hours of time-aligned audio/MIDI training data; built a custom K-means pipeline for scalable drum sample classification.
- Architected an end-to-end audio learning pipeline in Python (PyTorch + nnAudio) with trainable STFT front end.
- Designed and trained a custom 1D convolutional encoder-decoder for multi-class drum event detection and velocity prediction.
- Engineered model and data pipeline architecture under RTX 3080 (<8GB VRAM) constraints, balancing depth, batch size, and memory efficiency.
- Built a complete technical artifact including training workflow and a public GitHub repository documenting system architecture, constraints, and results.
HARMAN Professional Solutions - Sr. Director, Test & Validation
- Served as sole global decision authority for product safety and regulatory compliance (EMC, electrical safety, certifications) across $1B HARMAN Professional division.
- Held full stop-ship authority for all HARMAN Professional products.
- Led 62-engineer multinational validation organization ensuring production readiness across global markets.
- Directed $3M capital expansion equipping engineering organization with advanced instrumentation supporting 80+ new hires in a single fiscal year.
- Directed construction and outfitting of $3M advanced test lab including EMC and acoustic chambers.
- Designed and implemented engineering hiring system restoring operational control and enabling recruitment of 120 engineers in two years.
- Served as global technical authority in Shenzhen for cross-functional execution and factory integration.
- Designed automated validation frameworks detecting failures prior to customer exposure.
TP-LINK Technology Corporation - Director, Business Unit - Acoustics
- Led connected audio product development from concept through production.
- Worked directly with Qualcomm and Tencent on Wi-Fi speaker platform strategy.
- Delivered company's first Bluetooth speaker product.
- Directed integration of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, DSP tuning, and cloud streaming systems.
- Resolved factory-level technical and production challenges.
MUSIC Tribe (MUSIC Group/Behringer) - Vice President, R&D, China
- Directed global R&D organization of 200+ engineers across multiple disciplines.
- Increased release velocity 40% while reducing field failure rates to below 2%.
- Implemented Agile PLM as enterprise-wide development backbone.
- Improved yield and manufacturing integration through direct factory engagement.
- Held decision authority for global product shipment releases.
LINE 6 (Yamaha Guitar Group) - Vice President, Engineering
- Led 60-person engineering organization spanning hardware, DSP, embedded, and software disciplines.
- Defined product roadmap supporting sustained revenue growth and strong margins.
- Improved gross margins above 45% through architectural and cost discipline.
- Built Shenzhen engineering team reducing development cost and accelerating NPI cycles.
- Implemented Agile execution methods for hardware improving predictability and delivery.
360 Systems - Vice President, Engineering
- Led engineering for mission-critical broadcast video hardware and software platforms.
- Co-developed ImageServer video server adopted by major broadcast networks.
- Increased company revenue from $3M to $12M during tenure.
- Directed Linux- and Windows-based platform development for broadcast applications.
- Worked directly with senior network broadcast executives to develop key feature sets.
ALESIS - Vice President, Engineering
- Led engineering development of innovative professional audio hardware and software platforms.
- Directed multidisciplinary teams delivering industry-defining professional audio products.
- Identified and introduced strategic buyer inMusic, resulting in continuation of the Alesis brand.
SABRE/Travelocity - Software Engineer
- Architected Travelocity's first C/C++ homepage backend following the Sabre IPO.
- Owned production stability under live consumer load, with zero tolerance for memory leaks or runtime failure.
Education & Certifications
Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering
- Machine Learning (Andrew Ng)
- Deep Learning Specialization
- TensorFlow Developer Professional Certificate
- Data Science Specialization