Robert Wheeler
2 x Exit| CTO | Pilot | USAF Combat Veteran | @S.W.A.G. | Developer | Tech. Advisor | Agentic | AI | SLM | LLM | CNN | #DATA | LLM | E-COMM AI VOICE DISTRUPTOR | AWS | AVID LLM “Bullshit” researcher.
About
"Setbacks are unavoidable, giving up is inexcusable"
Ask me "how can you solve my problem?"
I build systems that STEAL MARKET SHARE.
I enjoy collaborating, working with people on the business side and the tech side. Collaboration shows what groups can do together, and what we can accomplish.
Led the development and implementation of a new cloud-based recruiting platform that resulted in a 20% reduction in IT costs, and increased revenue by over $200k per month for this startup.
Led the Design, architecture and development of a global talent solution application for Publicis/D’Arcy, reaching nearly 90K employees.
Developed a new tech for good(non-profit) mobile app that has been downloaded over 1 million times.
Secured $10 million in funding for 3 technology startups, with 2 exits.
Published several articles in online technology publications.
As a player/coach and a seasoned hands on Technology Leader with over 20 years of experience, I love to dig into customer problems and solve them with modern technology. I create, scale and optimize business portfolios that matter. To accomplish this, I focus on delivering key outcomes, building amazing teams and quickly adapting to new learnings. I am dedicated to driving innovation, leading technology teams, and shaping the digital future of organizations. My career is built on a foundation of creating strategic technology roadmaps that align with business objectives and empower companies to thrive in a rapidly evolving tech landscape, with a focus on leading AGILE I.T teams My teams are about one thing, company growth($), save the company($), and save the company time($)I have enjoyed many executive positions throughout my career in technology, sw development and strategy. My personal and professional experiences have taught me the following about myself:
- I put the customer and the business at the center of all that I do.
I can align, lead and grow world-class tech teams from 10 to 100 people.
- I love to win, but helping the team win gives me greater joy
- I speak tech and exec
- I tell great narratives
- The buck always stops with me
LEADERSHIP:
* Lead with a strategic, action-oriented mindset that is focused on performance, accountability, and outcomes.
* Maneuver comfortably through complex policy, process, and people-related organizational and system dynamics.
* Be a role model and serve as an active talent champion, coach, mentor, and connector.
* Build trust and serve as a helpful and contributing colleague.
* Champion an inclusive environment to support the System’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion objectives.
Experience
Chief Technology Officer - Founder
S.W.A.G. · United States
Jan 2025 – Present(1 yr 4 mos)
S.W.A.G. I take responsibility for every outcome in this company. Responsible for the day-to-day business operations and technical engineeringo leadership for our 15 team members, and our AI and data driven development of this AI e-commerce live auction marketplace featuring live auctions, private auctions and haggling with SWAGGY, our AI dude, leading an onshore and offshore dev team. Hands-on cloud expertise specifically for performance and cost optimization. Responsible for providing hands on, player/coach technical and architectural development, involving SLM / LLM technical leadership in development. Requirements-strategy developed to hit the vision, while architecting the solution to achieve scale, to ensure the most critical technical decisions are made correctly. Implementing cross team collaboration and best practices, while leading development teams in an AGILE (SAFE) methodology environment, implementing SCRUM for increased understanding of milestone progress within each sprint. In this type of role, identifying and passionately searching out solutions for a particular set of circumstances is critical, especially determining the technical architecture including the tech. stack, UI/UX mock-up and design, AWS architecture, database, architecture, and design. I am very hands-on as a player/coach instead
Fractional CTO
Manhattan Mental Health Counseling
Oct 2025 – Present(7 mos)
Fractional Chief Technology Officer
Inroads, Inc. · United States
Nov 2023 – Mar 2025(1 yr 5 mos)
AxiumPro is a 5 year old business intellingence suite of products. As a fractional CTO, I was hired to design, architect, create and implement an AI intellingence data platform, as well as Chatbots trained on specific customer data.
Fractional CTO
College Recruiter job search site · Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States
Jun 2022 – Sep 2023(1 yr 4 mos)
Reporting directory to the CEO and member of the Leadership Team, trusted advisor, partner and hands-on IT Leader, that is accountable for managing the day-to-day operations of this 6 person IT team including software development, project management UI/UX, devops, network security, and Cybersecurity operations to College Recruiter Job Board Search Technology. With a heavy focus on the User Experience, fostering innovation and collaborations and bottom line technology, led the API and AI development for job seekers, more tailored to their own personal search objectives. Centralized disparate support documentation for all applications and architecture, by focusing on our Roadmaps, goals and strategies, with a heavy focus on tool utilization with JIRA and Confluence, AGILE (SaFE) methodology Designed, architected, and refactored the performance of Google Cloud Talent solution(Javascript) to increase throughput from google to help with Google rate limiting, which increased the revenue by $200k due to increase in job uploads. Created SEO strategy plan that will enable CR jobs to start showing on google search result page. Created and implemented refactor with Google location search, tenant and multi location search. Developed a geolocation project with Javascript that enabled CR to accurately map jobs and applicants to the precise locations, resulting in increasing our traffic 5-fold. Focus on Software Delivery with iterative deliverables every 2 weeks.
Fractional CTO/CIO
POLKER · Washington DC-Baltimore Area
Oct 2021 – May 2022(8 mos)
Polker was a game development company with a big standing in crypto. Our main game is poker but Polker spun into the play to earn model for player retention and the cosmetic marketplace for revenue. Polker has our own Token, PKR, which is a non gambling token used for staking, marketplaces, and use of our patents
Federal Gov't Contractor - National Gallery of Art 6 mos
Bravo Consulting Group, LLC
Apr 2021 – Oct 2021(7 mos)
DAM Engineer
CTO/ Founder - Exited
Refleunce · Cheshire, Connecticut, United States
May 2013 – Jan 2020(6 yrs 9 mos)
As a startup, developer of the refluence content distribution application. re:fluence identifies the social media communities that surround thought leaders and uses advanced data science and big data methodologies to extract meaningful patterns of engagement and thematic content. refluence can analyze the content of your distribution and suggest changes that will give you the best chance of success. re:fluence then provides you with the ability to contact those social accounts with the highest probability of sharing and engaging with your content. We model a richer and more intuitive scoring and recommendations engine. Championed the deployment of 10000 users for the initial focus group of users for our product. Created an AWS application that automatically captures the IP address of 5k+ visitors for tracking the company website traffic. Resolved ongoing problems and accurately documented progress of Python/Django project. Streamlined the manual testing process by designing and implementing a proprietary platform for reporting, fixing, and verifying bugs, resulting in a 27% efficiency increase. Developed and implemented a 2-year platform and functionality scaling plan, expanding the team from 4 to 16 employees, and increasing the paying customer base by 350%.
CONTRACT Technical Consultant - DAM Systems - Ralph Lauren and Estee Lauder
ChalkDust Consulting, LLC · New York, New York, United States
Jan 2010 – Sep 2013(3 yrs 9 mos)
Chalkdust Consulting Technical Consultant Jan 2010 - 2013 Advised and implemented clients such as Ralph Lauren and Estee Lauder Ralph Lauren - established the requirements for defining, developing and implementing a DAM across the brand to be used for managing assets(new clothing lines) to be used during fashion shows displaying new products. Estee Lauder - responsible for developing and building out the “FUSION BEAUTY” web applications (e-commerce) for all web applications outside of the United States. All international web apps were overseen to ensure conformity to the standards of the rollout.
Technical Consultant - CONTRACT
Publicis Groupe · New York, New York, United States
Jun 2004 – Oct 2009(5 yrs 5 mos)
VP Global Web Development
Publicis Groupe · New York, New York, United States
Mar 2001 – Apr 2004(3 yrs 2 mos)
As vice president of global web development, I was responsible for all software applications and development on a global scale with dev and operations teams reporting to me in New York, Detroit, Chicago, and London. Also Responsible for all 24/7 data centers in New York and Chicago. Developed InTranet applications as well external applications for General Motors, Cadillac and Buick brands. I had a reporting team of 75.
Education
University of Maryland Global Campus
Bachelor's degree, Computer Science
The Johns Hopkins University
Certificate in Data Analysis, Data Analysis
University of Maryland
Master's Degree, American History (United States)
Jan 2010 – Jan 2012
Expertise
Specialties
