Ken Cochrane

About Ken Cochrane

I build and scale engineering organizations that ship high-quality software reliably, securely, and at speed.As Head of Engineering at Akuity, I serve as the operational backbone of a fast-growing SaaS company, owning everything that keeps the business running — engineering leadership, cloud infrastructure, security and compliance (SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR), hiring, and cost management across a globally distributed team. My job is to make sure the founders can stay focused on product and vision while the rest of the machine runs smoothly.Before Akuity, I led an engineering organization of 100+ people at WEX, spanning Software Development, Architecture, SRE, and Production Support — setting technical standards, driving build-vs-buy decisions, and scaling both the team and the systems underneath it.Earlier in my career, I was part of the founding engineering team at Docker, where I helped build and scale Docker Hub from the ground up into a platform used by millions of developers worldwide. That experience gave me a deep foundation in distributed systems, containers, and the infrastructure patterns that modern software delivery is built on. I\'m also the author of Docker Cookbook 2nd Edition (Packt, 2018), and I remain deeply invested in the GitOps and continuous delivery space — both in practice at Akuity and in the broader community.Core strengths: engineering leadership · team scaling · cloud infrastructure (AWS) · security & compliance · GitOps · CI/CD · Kubernetes · distributed systems

Experience

1. Head of Engineering

   Akuity

   Dec 2022 — Present · ME, US

   As Head of Engineering at Akuity, I serve as the operational right hand to the founders — owning everything that needs to run well so they can stay focused on product and vision.My scope covers engineering leadership, cloud infrastructure, security and compliance, hiring, and day-to-day company operations across a fully remote, globally distributed team. In practice, that means shipping and supporting the product, managing cloud spend, leading compliance programs (SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR), and handling the unglamorous but critical work that keeps a SaaS company healthy and growing.If it touches production, people, security, or compliance, I usually own it.

Education

• University of Maine

  BS, Computer Engineering

  1997 — 2002

Skills

• Ajax
• Programming
• Html
• Apache
• Sql
• Linux
• Struts
• Django
• Zeromq
• Bash
• Python
• Puppet
• Bug Tracking
• Sqlite
• Trac
• Css
• Ant
• Continuous Integration
• Web Development
• Javascript
• Mercurial
• Unix
• Iphone Development
• Database Management
• Jquery
• Java
• Web Applications
• Perl
• Shell Scripting
• Tomcat
• Memcached
• Databases
• Cacti
• Docker
• Nginx
• Munin
• Git
• Postgresql
• Linux Server Administration
• Subversion