Software Engineering Manager | Greater Chicago Area
I'm Nathan Rathbun, a Software Engineering Manager with a background in development, international business and project management. I'm an articulate communicator with extensive experience building diverse and distributed teams. I'm also a certified Scrum Master, a speaker of Japanese and an unflappable optimist.
My journey in the tech industry has spanned various sectors, including automotive and online ordering, where I honed my leadership abilities and consistently delivered great results. I've written payment processor and delivery integrations, managed multiple distributed development teams and run Scrum ceremonies as well. I bring a contagious positive energy to every group I join and pride myself on putting my team first, supporting them in every way I can as a servant leader.
Beyond my technical and managerial skills, I'm deeply committed to fostering inclusion, creativity, and building a culture of results. I've worked in diverse settings, from large enterprises to nimble startups, collaborating with teams spanning the globe. I've learned time and time again that when you bring together interesting problems and motivated, talented people, cool things happen. My experience as a language teacher and Japanese speaker has helped me better connect and communicate with team members regardless of location.
My focus is on mentoring, coaching, and nurturing the career growth of my team members. I have a strong belief in connecting individuals with the purpose of their work, recognizing that exceptional results come from shared passion and a common vision. I excel at identifying and eliminating obstacles to performance and clearing the way so my team can do what they do best.
Prior to my roles in Engineering Management, I spent two years as a Scrum Master. In that time, I led the scrum processes of three development teams and promoted Scrum adoption and Agile Methodologies across my company. I ran scrum ceremonies while continuously evaluating and refining processes the dev teams depended on. I made it my mission to find and eliminate barriers to the teams' success, and to be the person they came to when things became blocked, got confusing or started heading south. I'm at home working in Jira and Confluence, and am a firm believer in maintaining strong documentation and processes.
I've written code in C# and Javascript, managed data in SQL and MongoDB and worked heavily in Microsoft Azure. I have implemented complete API integrations for multiple payment processors and point of sale systems, Doordash and other delivery interfaces. I've actively contributed to moving codebases from monoliths to microservice architecture. While my current emphasis is on leadership and team development, I am always striving to learn new technology and keep my skills sharp. Recently, I'm working on raising my proficiency in React and Python.
