Melissa Davis

About Melissa Davis

As a Senior Technical Program Manager, I specialize in bridging engineering complexity and strategic clarity. I lead with systems thinking, pattern recognition, and a bias for prevention, turning root cause analysis into a proactive design discipline. Whether guiding SEV 1 postmortems or building scalable frameworks, my goal is simple: prevent avoidable failures before they become costly incidents.I’ve built a career as the connective tissue across organizations, translating between technical and non-technical, platform and product, detail and direction. My systems approach doesn’t just reveal what broke; it exposes the assumptions, misalignments, and process gaps that make failure possible and turns them into opportunities for better design, stronger architecture, and safer operations.Alongside my day-to-day work, I’m expanding how root cause thinking can strengthen organizational culture, psychological safety, and long-term resilience. I’m especially interested in helping teams embed blameless, repeatable RCA frameworks into how they operate so failure becomes an opportunity to learn, align, and prevent the next one.Currently partnering across teams to design systems that work under pressure, championing psychological safety in technical environments, and exploring how systemic thinking scales trust and performance.

Experience

1. Sr Technical Program Manager, Root Cause Analysis and Preventive Action Program

   Avalara

   Dec 2018 — Present · Seattle, WA, US

   I drive a culture of transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement by leading Avalara’s Root Cause Analysis and Preventive Action (RCAPA) Program. My work ensures that teams don’t just resolve incidents, they learn from them to prevent future occurrences.Founded, developed, and lead Avalara’s RCAPA Program, embedding structured root cause analysis and preventive action into engineering processes.Created and standardized the formal RCA submission process for the Engineering Department, ensuring systemic issues are identified and addressed.Investigate and analyze incidents to uncover true root causes, enabling data-driven mitigations and long-term solutions.Facilitate and mediate cross-team and executive-level conversations, aligning stakeholders on technical, business, and product decisions.Keep CTO and Engineering VPs informed on critical incidents, mitigations, and systemic trends impacting reliability.Drive and track short- and long-term corrective actions, ensuring follow-through and accountability across teams.Prepare and manage customer-facing RCAs, ensuring transparency and alignment with legal requirements.Document and optimize processes to reduce single points of failure, ensuring scalable and sustainable operational improvements.Share key learnings from RCAPA reviews across Engineering and Product teams to proactively reduce risk and prevent similar incidents across the ecosystem.