Matt Breeland

Strategic Engineering Leader

Building Strong Teams & Modern Software Platforms

Based in Apex, NC

About

Strategic engineering leader with over 20 years of experience delivering high-impact software and operational excellence across global organizations. Builds high-performing, cross-functional teams by fostering cultures of ownership, mentorship, and continuous improvement. Proven track record in stabilizing complex engineering organizations, driving predictable delivery and modernizing critical system architectures. Expert at serving as a bridge between technical execution, product strategy, and business objectives to deliver measurable enterprise impact.

Key Career Accomplishments

Operational Turnaround & Platform Delivery(Innova)

Restored engineering velocity and delivery predictability by rebuilding the software organization following significant team turnover. Preserved critical institutional knowledge, strengthened engineering practices, and led delivery of a unified platform that resolved long-standing bottlenecks across a 30-year product landscape.

Global Team Scaling & Mission-Driven SaaS(Siglar Carbon)

Recruited and managed 12+ specialists across two pods spanning software engineering, data science, and product design. Delivered two commercially successful SaaS products that helped customers reduce CO2 emissions while improving financial outcomes.

Technical Product Leadership & Revenue Protection(Emerson)

Successfully delivered the Roxar API (Python SDK) in under 12 months after prior multi-year efforts had stalled. Aligned business and engineering around clear requirements, enabled key technical decisions, and protected significant revenue while enabling the platform's transition to modern AI/ML capabilities.

Professional Experience

Innova

Software Team Lead

Apex, NC (headquartered in Sandnes, Norway)

2024 – Present

Stabilized Engineering Organization: Rebuilt the software team following significant turnover, preserving critical institutional knowledge while restoring morale, trust, and delivery predictability.
People Leadership (5 engineers): Managed and mentored a core team of 5 engineers, establishing clear expectations, strengthening engineering practices, improving delivery standards, and improving team throughput and reliability.
Operational Excellence: Implemented Agile cadences, CI/CD, code review standards, and TDD/unit testing to transform a legacy environment into a measurable, dependable delivery engine.
Platform Modernization (NEO): Architected and launched a modular C/C++/Python/TypeScript platform that unified previously fragmented systems, eliminated long-standing technical bottlenecks, and enabled rapid multi-product development.
End-to-End Execution: Led cross-functional delivery across firmware, backend, and frontend systems, integrating industrial, embedded, and web interfaces to ship a production-ready deployment for the company's largest customer on time.

Smartcube

Chief Product and Technology Officer

Stavanger, Norway

2023 – 2024

Operational Excellence: Established Agile planning and delivery cadences to improve collaboration, clarity of ownership, and delivery predictability.
Platform Modernization: Architected a cloud-native platform on AWS, integrating the AppFarm low-code platform to modernize infrastructure and improve scalability.
Product Delivery: Delivered I-SPIR, a logistics and spare parts collaboration platform for the offshore energy sector.
People Leadership (3 engineers): Managed and mentored a core team of 3 engineers, establishing clear expectations, strengthening engineering practices, and improving delivery consistency, throughput, and reliability.

Siglar Carbon

Chief Product and Technology Officer

Stavanger, Norway

2021 – 2023

People Leadership (12+ specialists): Rebuilt and led two cross-functional pods comprising engineers, data scientists, and designers, establishing clear ownership and delivery standards across all disciplines.
Data Science-Enabled Execution: Embedded data scientists into team workflows (planning, execution, reviews) to deliver ML-informed capabilities without siloing research from product delivery.
Shipped Commercial SaaS: Delivered Ship Finder and Estimator, two revenue-generating solutions that helped charterers reduce emissions by linking CO2 reduction to financial outcomes.
Platform Modernization: Modernized the platform into a cloud-native microservices architecture across AWS, GCP, and Kubernetes, strengthening CI/CD, software quality, and release reliability.
Operational Excellence: Established incident management, monitoring, and customer support workflows to improve uptime, response times, and stakeholder transparency.

Cognite

Senior Solutions Architect (Regional Lead)

Stavanger, Norway

2019 – 2021

Regional Office Establishment: Helped launch Cognite's Stavanger presence, serving as the primary local lead for office operations and technical culture.
Cross-Organizational People Leadership (15 specialists): Co-led the Data Liberation Chapter, a multidisciplinary organization of Data Engineers, Business Analysts, and IT experts from Cognite and Aker BP.
Matrixed Team Management: Co-led the delivery of secure, observable data pipelines by coordinating efforts across internal specialists and client-side experts.
Data Platform Enablement: Optimized data contextualization workflows supporting five downstream product teams, enabling faster delivery of large-scale software and AI initiatives.
Technical Ownership: Built and operated critical pipelines on GCP and OpenShift, maintaining strong security and reliability in a high-stakes industrial environment.

Emerson Automation Solutions

Technical Product Manager

Stavanger, Norway

2014 – 2019

Turnaround Delivery (Roxar API): Delivered the Roxar API (Extensibility Platform, Python SDK) in under 12 months after prior multi-year efforts had stalled, helping modernize the platform for AI/ML workflows while protecting a core revenue stream for the company.
Customer-Driven Prioritization: Led global discovery across key clients, trade shows, and regional offices to translate market needs into roadmap priorities and actionable engineering plans.
Bridge Leadership: Aligned business stakeholders and multiple engineering groups across Reservoir, Wells, Structural, and Infrastructure to unblock delivery and drive critical architecture decisions.

Emerson Automation Solutions

Software Engineer / Senior Software Engineer

Stavanger, Norway

2006 – 2014

Product Development: Developed geomodeling and data management solutions for reservoir workflows.
Delivery Automation: Maintained CI pipelines and delivery tooling (Jenkins, Gerrit, Git) to streamline software delivery.

LiveWire Logic

Implementation Engineer

Morrisville, NC

2005 – 2006

Client Delivery: Built and deployed early NLP-based agents for enterprise clients including Ford and Circuit City.

Technical Skills

Core Competencies

People Leadership

Team Growth
Mentorship
Performance Management
Talent Retention

Delivery Leadership

Agile Delivery
Delivery Predictability
Process Improvement
Cross-Functional Execution

Operational Excellence

Reliability Engineering
Continuous Integration
Incident Management
Software Craftsmanship

Technical Leadership

Software Architecture
Systems Design
AI Strategy
Platform Modernization

Organizational Leadership

Distributed Team Leadership
Change Leadership
Stakeholder Alignment
Operating Cadence

Technical Skills

Languages

C
C++
Python
Go
TypeScript

Architecture & Design

Microservices
Domain-Driven Design
SOLID
Test-Driven Development
API Design

Cloud & Infrastructure

AWS
GCP
OpenShift
Docker

Delivery & Operations

Continuous Integration
GitHub Actions
Jenkins
Incident Management
Site Reliability Engineering

Data & AI

LLM Integration
Machine Learning
Data Contextualization
NLP
AI Strategy

Contact

The best way to reach me is through LinkedIn.

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