Open to opportunities

John Van Straalen

@johnvanstraalen

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Product-focused engineering leader who ships resilient platforms and real outcomes.

United States

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What I'm looking for

I seek roles where I can ship product quickly, stabilize platforms, mentor teams, and apply practical AI and QA to drive measurable outcomes.

I build and stabilize products across QA, product, platform, and AI—shipping practical systems under live traffic and tight timelines. Over 25 years I’ve led QA, product management, and platform efforts that turned brittle prototypes into production-grade SaaS, decentralized compute platforms, and developer tools; notable wins include launching an AI model marketplace at Maitrix.io and relaunching MediaRich into a modern SaaS foundation.

I lead with hands-on execution: rebuilding SDLC and QA strategies, implementing AI-augmented automation, and shipping developer-facing tooling like JX. I prioritize measurable results—reduced cycle time, improved uptime, scaled deployments, and increased user engagement—while mentoring cross-functional teams to move from stalled roadmaps to sustained delivery.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Co-Founder

Current

TwoBit Coders

Jul 2024 - Present (1 year 2 months)

Co-founded TwoBit Coders and led productization and launch of JX, a modern JSON processor, establishing branding, docs, ops, and community channels to get the tool into developer hands quickly.

Product Strategy Developer Tools Go Open Source Documentation GTM Community Engagement GitHub

Current

Founder & Principal Consultant

Current

Lodebek Computer Services LLC

May 2007 - Present (18 years 4 months)

Founded a consultancy delivering strategic QA, SDLC modernization, and product stabilization across SaaS, mobile, and desktop, cutting cycle time and shipping testable product lines for multiple clients.

QA Strategy SDLC Test Automation Consulting Release Management

Product Manager

CPUcoin

May 2020 - Jul 2024 (4 years 2 months)

Led QA, support, and release processes to turn prototypes into a global decentralized compute platform, launching Maitrix.io (AI model marketplace) in 174+ countries with 75+ integrated models.

QA Management Monetization Telemetry Localization Release Hardening API Design Incident Response

Principal Product Manager

Equilibrium

May 2020 - Jul 2024 (4 years 2 months)

Stabilized and modernized a legacy media platform into a SaaS foundation, shipping MediaRich 6.2, maintaining zero unscheduled downtime, and reducing Tier 1 escalations by 70% with an AI-backed triage system.

Product Management Triage React Release Management Monitoring Customer Support

Product Manager

Bigleaf Networks

Jan 2021 - Sep 2022 (1 year 8 months)

Revitalized roadmap and shipped resilience and provisioning systems, redesigning disaster recovery tunnels, reducing monitoring bandwidth by 66%, and enabling MSP-scale remote provisioning.

SD WAN Disaster Recovery Monitoring API Design MSP Integrations Capacity Planning

Senior QA Engineer

Datto

Dec 2016 - May 2020 (3 years 5 months)

Owned QA validation for bi-weekly Datto Network Manager releases, covering firmware, devices, and cloud rollouts under live traffic to ensure stable global deployment.

Release Management CI CD Regression Testing Test Automation Monitoring

Senior QA Engineer

Open-Mesh

Nov 2014 - Dec 2016 (2 years 1 month)

Built QA from scratch for a bare-metal networking platform, delivering end-to-end test coverage and reducing support ticket volume by 40% through field-driven validation.

Test Lab Simulation Regression Testing

Lead Quality Assurance Engineer

Audio Precision

Oct 2007 - Oct 2014 (7 years)

Led QA for the APx Series audio analyzers, instituting automated test coverage across software and firmware and owning final QA signoff for releases.

Test Automation Protocol Compliance (HDMI Bluetooth)C NUnit

Quality Assurance Engineer

Planar Systems

Jan 2005 - Jan 2007 (2 years)

Validated kiosk hardware and browser-based UIs for national point-of-sale and digital signage deployments, designing full-system QA for retail and logistics use cases.

Embedded QA System Integration Load Testing

QA Engineer

Axian

Jul 2004 - Dec 2004 (5 months)

Delivered rugged kiosk QA for retail deployment, validating UI, hardware durability, and server-integrated workflows to produce a production-ready build under tight deadlines.

Regression Testing Field Testing

QA Engineer

IntelliTools

Jan 2003 - Jan 2004 (1 year)

Contract QA for educational accessibility software, focusing on UI, regression, and usability testing across Windows and Mac builds to meet compliance-driven needs.

Accessibility Testing Usability Regression Testing Compliance

QA Engineer

Equilibrium

Jan 2001 - Jan 2002 (1 year)

Tested and validated early MediaRich platform releases under high-load, built hardware-driven load environments, contributed automation in MediaScript, and owned final QA signoff.

Load Testing Automation)Scripting