Software Engineering Manager | Greater Indianapolis Area
I’m Nathan Rathbun, a Software Engineering Manager with a background in software development, international business, and project management. I’m an optimistic, goal-oriented leader and a clear, thoughtful communicator with extensive experience building and supporting diverse, distributed teams.
My career in the tech industry has spanned multiple sectors, including automotive and online ordering, where I’ve developed my leadership style and consistently delivered strong results. I’ve built payment processors and delivery integrations, managed multiple distributed development teams, and led complex initiatives from early planning through production delivery. I bring steady, positive energy to every team I join and pride myself on putting people first, supporting them as a servant leader and advocate.
Beyond technical execution and management, I’m deeply committed to fostering inclusion, creativity, and a culture of results. I’ve worked in environments ranging from large enterprises to fast-moving startups, collaborating with teams across the globe. Time and again, I’ve seen that when motivated, talented people are paired with interesting problems, great things happen. My background as a language teacher and Japanese speaker has further strengthened my ability to connect, communicate, and collaborate across cultures and time zones.
My focus is on building strong teams, developing people, and delivering reliable, high-quality software. In my current role, I lead and support four high-performing teams comprising 24 software engineers and QA engineers, overseeing the full software development lifecycle including planning, design, development, testing, and deployment. I foster a collaborative, inclusive, and growth-oriented environment rooted in clear goal-setting, continuous feedback, and thoughtful experimentation. I’ve successfully hired, onboarded, and mentored multiple engineers, while also partnering with leadership on broader recruiting efforts across the organization.
I’ve spearheaded the integration of a business-critical application into a larger software ecosystem and led the technical execution of launching its first external clients. This included directing a full migration of the application to the company’s infrastructure, improving performance, scalability, and security. I place a strong emphasis on clarity and sustainability, developing comprehensive architecture and workflow documentation that has improved knowledge transfer, accelerated onboarding, and increased overall team fluency and ownership of the system.
I remain deeply engaged in technical and architectural conversations, collaborating closely with senior engineers, engineering leadership, and cross-functional partners to design scalable, maintainable solutions. I work hands-on with teams to resolve complex challenges, drive continuous improvement, and uphold high engineering standards through thoughtful code reviews and best practices. Above all, I focus on removing obstacles, aligning work to meaningful outcomes, and creating the conditions where engineers can do their best work.
I’ve written production code in C# and JavaScript, worked extensively with SQL and MongoDB, and worked on systems in both Azure and AWS. My experience includes implementing full API integrations for payment processors, point-of-sale systems, DoorDash, and other delivery platforms, as well as working on migrations from monolithic architectures to microservices. While my primary focus today is leadership and team development, I remain technically engaged and committed to continuous learning. Most recently, I’ve been deepening my proficiency in React and Python.
