Roy Hill-Percival

About Roy Hill-Percival

GitHub: https://github.com/RoyHPWith three successful startup exits, one of them as Co-Founder, a patent in distributed systems architecture, and extensive experience building and leading diverse teams from inception to Fortune 500 acquisitions, I am not your typical engineering leader. Passionate about security and scalability, I have a proven track record of building and guiding high-performing teams to deliver cutting-edge solutions, even in highly regulated and secretive fields.In addition to being an engineering leader, I am a software architect, full-stack systems engineer, and security consultant with experience developing distributed ephemeral cryptographic messaging systems, web infrastructure, telephony/real-time communication, automation, machine learning, image analysis, and analytical systems. I\'m passionate about security, distributed systems, and team building.I began my career as an engineer and have worked exclusively for start-ups ever since. From designing protocols and developing applications to building and scaling infrastructure in both data centers and the cloud, as well as growing engineering teams from scratch to over 50 members, I have extensive experience across all facets of engineering.I also founded my own consulting company, HexTech Consulting, and in my spare time gained experience working with a diverse array of clients, building everything from mobile apps to dashboards to entire platforms, as well as optimizing cloud infrastructure. I have since stepped back from this and serve in an advisory capacity only.I am also an AWS Solutions Architect, and have experience with SOC 2 and ISO 27001, having driven compliance efforts and achieved these certifications in a number of my organizations.I currently enjoy working with recent AI/ML advancements and frameworks, such as DeepSeek-R1, Llama, QwQ, Mistral, LangChain, as well as PyTorch and TensorFlow. Languages and Services: Node.js, TypeScript, Rust, C, PHP, Python, Swift, Elixir, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Cassandra, MongoDB, Redis/Valkey, Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ, ZeroMQ, Docker, Kubernetes, and ScyllaDB.My volunteer projects currently include the following open source projects: Anonymouse.io - an open source platform for anonymizing voice calls, texting, and MMS; Open Broadcaster Software - an open source, cross-platform, video streaming suite.

Experience

1. Senior Director of Engineering

   Expedited Travel Llc

   Mar 2019 — Present · Atlanta, GA, US

   Acquirer of my startup govWorks)As Senior Director of Engineering at Expedited Travel, I lead the integration of govWorks’ technology into our broader ecosystem, ensuring seamless compatibility with existing systems and development teams. My focus is on maintaining platform scalability, security, and efficiency while aligning technology with business objectives.I continue to drive innovation by leveraging AI/ML to develop new products and services, optimizing document processing, identity verification, and compliance. I lead Engineering teams to build scalable, AI-powered solutions that enhance efficiency and customer experience.Achievements:• Successfully integrated govWorks technology into Expedited Travel’s platform, aligning with existing systems and teams.• Led the Engineering strategy post-acquisition, ensuring a smooth transition.• Drove organization-wide IT compliance initiatives, obtaining SOC 2 compliance certification, ensuring adherence to industry-standard security, availability, and confidentiality requirements.• Developed RushMyPhoto.com, an AI/ML-powered solution that enables users to take a selfie and have it analyzed against photo compliance requirements, automatically positioning, cropping, and background-removing images to ensure compliance for passports, international driving permits, and other official documents.• Built AI/ML-driven document scanning technology to extract data from identity documents such as driver’s licenses, automatically detecting, cropping, and parsing key information to streamline application processing.• Expanded platform support for automating Visas, with many new countries supported. • Oversee large fault-tolerant, distributed, multi-region AWS environments, handling of requests per second.• Scaled and integrated large Engineering teams, fostering collaboration across Expedited Travel’s broader technology organization.

Education

• New Jersey Institute of Technology

  Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Computer Science

  2010 — 2014

• Metuchen High School

  High School Diploma

  2006 — 2010

Skills

• Node.js
• Information Security Management
• Mysql
• Distributed Systems
• Vulnerability Assessment
• Redis
• Wireless Networking
• Networking
• Integrated Circuit Design
• Software Development
• Web Development
• Information Assurance
• Intelligence Analysis
• Threat & Vulnerability Management
• Java
• Encryption
• Computer Science
• Zeromq
• Erlang
• Social Engineering
• Network Security
• Security
• Php
• Computer Security
• Access Control
• Cissp
• Disaster Recovery
• Information Security
• Cloud Computing
• Cryptography
• Linux System Administration
• Computer Forensics
• Saas
• Physical Security
• Penetration Testing
• Ceh
• Machine Learning
• Linux
• Wireless Security
• Cassandra