What I Did Most Recently
I ran engineering at Lucerna Health for six years (2020–2026). I built the team, the data platform, the security and compliance program, and the IT org. I handled vendor contracts, architecture decisions, and brought AI into how we build and what we ship. If it was technical and it mattered, it was mine.
The platform did healthcare data exchange, ETL, entity resolution, and patient engagement. Six years of evolving the stack across AWS, Snowflake, and a lot of other tools, always migrating live product without breaking things. We completed two full HITRUST CSF certification cycles.
I'm looking for Head of Engineering, Director, or VP of Engineering. Hybrid or remote, interesting problems, a company that invests in how the engineering org works.
Resume (PDF) · Salt Lake City, Utah · carl@carlkibler.com · LinkedIn
How I Got Here
I started at Motorola building global telecom systems. Designed enterprise platforms, got them certified, trained clients' teams in the US and overseas.
At Cerner I ran a Patient Portal project across two EHR systems and an insurer. Two years, three companies, CTO-level oversight from all of them. I also rebuilt a partner's engineering team from the ground up: moved out the people who weren't working, hired new engineers, designers, and a product manager.
At Instructure I took over a struggling team and got it shipping again. Every project on time or early. Fixed the team's relationship with Product along the way.
Then Lucerna, where I built everything from scratch.
I have an Executive MBA (summa cum laude, 2014) from the Bloch School at UMKC, and a BS in Computer Engineering (2005) from the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
What I'm Good At
I'm comfortable from PostgreSQL query plans to investor due diligence. Stack: Python, Django, AWS, Snowflake, PostgreSQL, Redis — healthcare data exchange and ETL at meaningful scale. Two HITRUST certification cycles. LLM integration that's in production, not demos. On the business side: roadmaps, build-vs-buy decisions, security reviews, annual budgeting. Six years of running everything gives you range.
Personal Projects
Coldbrew (page · GitHub) — Offline unlock toolkit for the Expresso HD exercise bike. Expresso's cloud shut down in 2025, locking most content on bikes people already owned. Coldbrew patches five separate DRM layers to restore full access forever.
ScreenSage (product page) — macOS menu bar app that renames screenshots automatically using AI vision. Take a screenshot; it analyzes and renames it. Supports Gemini, GPT-4o-mini, OpenRouter, and local Ollama.
PinkTank (page · GitHub) — Platform for tracking and organizing civic lobbying efforts in the Utah Legislature. AI bill analysis, custom calendar subscriptions, and advocacy coordination tools.
Memedex (page · GitHub) — AI-organized meme catalog. Gemini analyzes each image for captions, tags, mood, and art style. Algolia-powered search, Discord bot import, Rabbit Hole browse mode.
Dungeon Achievements (page · live site) — Serverless toy that generates fake dungeon-style achievements for any activity you enter. Powered by Claude on AWS Bedrock. Style modes include mean, corporate, and nice. Mean is best.
Agent Skills (page · GitHub) — Skills for Claude Code and Codex: pre-mortems, first-run red-teaming, PR automation, trust audits, support inbox simulation.
Citadel LLM Security Lab (page · GitHub) — A one-day red-team sprint that evolved a prompt injection scanner through nine generations. The core finding: once an agent has tool use, user input filtering is the wrong perimeter.
SmartVote — Civic tech for ballot research. Scrapes candidate positions and voter guide data to give voters a clearer picture of who they're actually voting for.
What I Care About
Engineering culture is a competitive advantage. My team's average tenure was 4+ years because I invest in people, give them room to work, and go to bat for them. I'd rather teach someone to think well than produce code fast.
I've been a Big Brother through Big Brothers Big Sisters for 14+ years. I teach AP Computer Science through Microsoft TEALS and have for 7+ years. I got an Executive MBA (summa cum laude) because I wanted to understand the business side as well as I understood the technical side.
Public Speaking
- "The Power of AI in Software Testing" — October 2024
- "Real Life is not an Edge Case" — April 2019
- "Mobile Testing and Chatbots" — August 2018
The Personal Stuff
I live in Salt Lake City with two wonderful people. I build furniture in my shop, explore Utah's national parks, and have been doing Big Brothers Big Sisters long enough that my Little is taller than me. The Bonneville Salt Flats photo on the home page is one of my favorite places.