James Thigpen

James Thigpen has extensive experience in engineering and leadership roles. Their most recent position was as the Head of Engineering at Clora, where they started in 2022. Prior to that, they worked at Gremlin as the Director of Engineering from November 2020 to May 2022. During their time at Gremlin, James took over the leadership of the Product Engineering team after Covid-related layoffs and guided them through a difficult period of attrition. James also drove an agile adoption process to increase predictability and observability within the teams.

Before Gremlin, James held multiple roles at Rover.com. From September 2018 to April 2020, they served as the Sr. Director of Engineering - Infrastructure. In this role, they led various engineering teams responsible for international expansion, SRE, and payments. James also drove roadmaps across different areas of the company to align with leadership strategies.

Prior to that, James held positions at Cheezburger, Inc. as the Director of Engineering and Kaseya as a Software Engineer. James also owned a software consulting and service firm called Unit of Work, LLC and worked as a Software Engineer at JMT Systems Consulting. James began their career as a Research Assistant at the University of Houston and gained internship experience at Advanced Digital Imaging Research, Inc.

Overall, James Thigpen has expertise in engineering leadership, agile adoption, infrastructure management, and international expansion.

James Thigpen's education history includes obtaining a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in Computer Science from the University of Houston between 2000 and 2004. James then pursued further education at the University of Houston, completing a Master of Science (MS) in Computer Science from 2005 to 2007.