Resume

Summary

I’m a hands-on Principal Software Engineer with over 20 years of experience building and improving software. I work on mature, multi-tenant platforms, where I simplify systems, make them more reliable, and remove friction for the engineers and teams using them. I lead by listening, finding the underlying problem, and helping build the solution.

Contact

You can contact me directly on LinkedIn or learn more about me.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomkrush/

Experience

Principal Software Engineer (2025-Present)

@ Cars Commerce, Chicago, IL

  • Explore and define architectural approaches for the future evolution of Dealer Inspire’s multi-tenant website platform.
  • Work across engineering, product, and business teams to understand platform constraints and identify opportunities for simplification.

Staff Software Engineer (2023-2025)

@ Cars Commerce, Chicago, IL

  • Transitioned the Dealer Inspire Website Platform, supporting 6,500 customers, to a containerized, cloud-native platform, drastically improving deployment speed. Reduced deployment time from 20 minutes per customer to 60 minutes for all sites. Decreased TTFB from 10+ seconds to 0.1 seconds.
  • Consolidated 450+ repositories and thousands of branches into a single monorepo, reducing cognitive load and improving code sharing across teams.
  • Developed a new local environment for developers, reducing setup time from 2–3 hours to under 1 minute.

Senior Manager, Website Engineering (2021-2023)

@ Cars Commerce, Chicago, IL

  • Implemented an incident management and on-call rotation system, enabling 24⁄7 response to incidents within 15 minutes.
  • Restructured teams around specific product features, enhancing autonomy, reducing dependencies, and boosting feature velocity.
  • Designed a performance management framework to provide clear expectations and growth paths for both managers and engineers.

Feature Development Team Lead (2018-2021)

@ Dealer Inspire (Acquired by Cars.com), Naperville, IL

  • Developed Site Builder, a visual editor for rapid website creation using atomic design principles. Reduced website creation time from 5–6 weeks to 1–2 weeks, doubling monthly production website launches from 100 to 200.
  • Built Brand Hub, a tool to create Site Builder components and sync them to WordPress sites. Reduced content creation and deployment from 2–3 days to 1–2 hours.
  • Created Lightning Inventory, a modern user interface for vehicle search and viewing, cutting page load time from 5–6 seconds to 1–2 seconds with instant search results.

Senior Feature Developer (2016-2018)

@ Dealer Inspire - Naperville, IL

  • Developed local developer tools to manage and streamline local environments, reducing setup time from days to 15 minutes and enabling non-technical users to run WordPress locally.
  • Built content syndication tools for WordPress, automating content creation and syncing across hundreds of sites, saving the equivalent of 2–3 full-time positions.
  • Led page speed optimization efforts by developing tooling and training developers, achieving a 20% improvement in page speed scores across all websites.

Lead Programmer (2014 - 2016)

@ Martin Creative – Schiller Park, IL

  • Migrated 50+ websites from WP Engine to Digital Ocean, significantly reducing hosting costs.
  • Integrated Microsoft Dynamics CRM with WooCommerce to sync customer data and orders.

Senior Developer (2012 - 2014)

@ Echo Design Group – Naperville, IL

  • Created 20+ custom WordPress websites for local businesses, designing custom themes and plugins to meet specific client needs.

Programmer (2011 - 2012)

@ Blueye Creative – Chicago, IL

  • Developed the Boeing Milestones iPad app, an interactive timeline celebrating Boeing’s 100-year history, featuring multimedia elements.
  • Built custom WordPress themes and plugins tailored to client requirements.

Skills

  • Platform engineering: Multi-tenant architecture, APIs, content systems, enterprise integrations, scalability, performance, and security
  • Software delivery: CI/CD, deployment automation, monorepos, testing, and GitHub Actions
  • Cloud and operations: AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, Linux, observability, incident management, New Relic, and Datadog
  • Developer experience: Local development environments, internal tooling, documentation, and troubleshooting
  • Languages and frameworks: PHP, JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, Node.js, Laravel, Vue.js, React, and MySQL
  • Technical leadership: Systems thinking, architecture, mentoring, change management, and stakeholder collaboration
  • Additional experience: Python, Rust, Elixir, Bash, WordPress, and iOS development