Holly Allen

Holly Allen is the current Advisor at Upsolve. Holly has over fifteen years of experience in engineering leadership and management positions. Holly has a proven track record in building and leading high-performing engineering teams.

Holly started their career at PDI/Dreamworks where they spent eight years in various engineering roles, eventually becoming the R&D Manager. In this role, Holly managed a team of engineers responsible for the design and development of software systems used for render submission and reporting.

In 2013, Holly left PDI/Dreamworks to become the Head of Software Development at the Public Library of Science. Holly was responsible for leading a team of developers who worked on improving the storage, retrieval, and indexing of production files and metadata. This new asset management system underlies the Dreamworks Animation Apollo tools.

In 2015, Holly left the Public Library of Science to join 18F / GSA as their Director of Engineering. In this role, Holly oversaw the direction and efforts of an engineering team responsible for a variety of projects across the United States federal government.

Most recently, Holly was the Senior Director Of Engineering at Slack from February 2018 until April 2022. In this role, Holly was responsible for managing a geographically-diverse team of developers working in Java, C++ and Python in a SOA based environment.

Holly has a proven track record in building and leading high-performing engineering teams. Holly is an expert in Java, C++, and Python and has a deep understanding of SOA based environments. Holly is currently using their skills and expertise to advise Upsolve on how to build a strong engineering team and culture.

Holly Allen has a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.