available · engineering leadership + applied ai · atlanta, ga
I build engineering teams that ship at consumer scale — and modernize the platforms underneath them.
I'm Antonio Yon. Across 25+ years I've led engineering and product engineering at Amazon, Cox Automotive, Sysco, and Phreesia — most recently at the director level. Lately my work centers on AI in the software lifecycle: I built PRISM at Phreesia and now author SPECTRUM, governed agentic-SDLC frameworks that let AI agents write production code without giving up control of quality, security, or accountability.
leading engineering
agentic SDLC I built at Phreesia
→ governed AI agents + SPECTRUM
5 cross-functional teams
how i lead
Senior enough to set direction, close enough to the code to be useful.
I lead managers and teams, but I've never stopped being a builder. That combination is what lets me modernize platforms and bring new technology in — AI agents included — without stalling delivery.
Lead managers, not just engineers
Manager of managers. At Phreesia I owned five cross-functional teams and eight direct reports across engineering, product, and architecture, and earlier scaled an iOS org from a single office into multiple teams.
Bring AI into the SDLC, responsibly
I built PRISM at Phreesia — adopted by eight teams — and now author SPECTRUM: governed, spec-driven workflows that give AI coding agents durable context and keep human review in the loop. Recent builds have turned 3–5 days of engineering into an afternoon. I advise teams on this separately through Antfarm Solutions ↗.
Modernize without stopping delivery
I move platforms to cloud-native footing while the business keeps shipping — Phreesia's integration stack onto AWS EKS, Sysco's internal platform onto OpenShift — sequenced by business risk, not technical preference.
Make delivery faster and safer
Operating-model and testing redesigns that cut Phreesia's integration cycles from two weeks to about two days, and lifted developer productivity 35% through shared API standards.
pace notes
What I've learned about leading
I'm a reflective leader by nature, and I've kept blogs built around exactly that — First by Reflection, and The Greater Fool, where a mid-career dive into economics had me writing about incentives and how not to be the greater fool in any deal. What's stuck with me most is the discipline of turning experience into principles. A few have held up across every team I've led.
"By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest."
— Confucius
Psychological safety comes first
I build teams where every person is empowered to form and voice an opinion — empowered individuals, not just well-managed ones. A culture where every voice carries is the foundation everything else sits on.
Name the risk before you have the fix
Too many people only surface a risk once they've got a mitigation in hand. Saying "I don't know yet" out loud is part of leading, not a crack in it — accepting that we don't know everything is the job.
Take people where they wouldn't go alone
The leaders worth following move a team to places it would never reach on its own. That's the whole point of the role.
experience
Selected experience
full-time focus
Founder & Principal Advisor
My long-running advisory practice, now my full-time focus since Phreesia. I help software teams adopt agentic AI responsibly — AI strategy, governance, and agentic SDLC grounded in SPECTRUM. Recent engagements have compressed work scoped at three-to-five engineering days into a single afternoon, and I'm currently the full-stack engineer on a Large Action Model project that navigates and interacts with real third-party websites. antfarmsolutions.com ↗
Director, Network Solutions — Engineering & Product Engineering
Owned five cross-functional teams (~36 people, 8 direct reports). Built PRISM, an in-repo agentic SDLC framework that captured specs, BDD tests, and architectural decisions so AI coding agents had durable context and every decision had a reviewable history — adopted by eight teams. It became the internal precursor to SPECTRUM. Also redesigned the operating model to shared ownership across product, architecture, and engineering.
Director, Integration Engineering
Led five teams running Phreesia's national integration platform (API, HL7, FHIR). Migrated the stack to cloud-native AWS — EKS, SQS/SNS, DocumentDB, DynamoDB — and set API standards that raised developer productivity 35% and accelerated partner onboarding.
Integration Architect
Defined target-state architecture and migration paths — API-first contracts, event-driven flows, observability, clear security boundaries — balancing risk and partner impact over an all-at-once cutover.
Engineering Platform Owner
Built the internal developer-productivity platform on Red Hat OpenShift, then golden paths that let product teams adopt managed Kubernetes without learning Kubernetes first. When COVID closed restaurants, my team shipped a direct-to-consumer marketplace end-to-end in two weeks — the platform is what made that velocity possible.
Principal Solution Architect
Architected and hands-on built a customer-facing deal widget embedded on Dealertrack and Autotrader vehicle pages (React, Node.js, GraphQL, AWS) handling credit check, trade-in, and price negotiation. Promoted from Solution Architect to Principal.
Senior Technical Program Manager
Drove experimentation strategy for the amazon.com A/B testing platform, raising the bar on experimental design and on what counted as a real result rather than a launch ceremony.
Earlier engineering & architecture leadership
Architecture and engineering leadership across fintech, healthcare, and consumer services — API aggregation, commercial lending on .NET/Azure, native iOS teams, and utility billing platforms.
where engineering is going
I'm already working where most orgs are headed.
Most teams are still figuring out how to let AI agents write production code without losing the plot on quality, security, and accountability. I've spent years on exactly that problem — first with PRISM inside Phreesia, now with SPECTRUM.
SPECTRUM is my governed, spec-driven framework: specifications, BDD tests, and architectural decisions captured in-repo so agents have durable context and every decision has a reviewable history. It's the kind of forward investment I bring into the organizations I lead.
let's talk
Let's build something.
I'm open to senior engineering leadership roles — Director, VP, or Head of Engineering — based in or around Atlanta. If that's the kind of leader you're looking for, I'd like to hear from you.
or write directly to antonio@antonioyon.com