Tim Foster
About Tim Foster
Tim Foster serves as the Director of Software Engineering at Medallia, where he leads a team of DevOps engineers and has significantly improved release processes. With extensive experience in software engineering and release automation, he has held various leadership roles across multiple companies since the 1980s.
Work at Medallia
Tim Foster currently serves as the Director of Software Engineering at Medallia, a position he has held since 2024. He operates in a hybrid work environment in Greater Boston. Prior to this role, he was the Director of Site Reliability Engineering at Medallia from 2022 to 2024. In his current role, he leads a team of DevOps engineers focused on achieving high levels of automation within the software development process.
Education and Expertise
Tim Foster earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Lynchburg, where he studied from 1982 to 1986. He possesses expertise in various tools and platforms, including Gradle, Maven, Jenkins, GitHub, Azure, AWS, Kubernetes, and Docker. His technical knowledge supports his leadership in software engineering and DevOps practices.
Background in Software Engineering
Tim Foster has a diverse background in software engineering, having worked in various roles across multiple companies. He began his career at MITRE as a Member of Technical Staff from 1986 to 1988. He has held positions at Viewlogic Systems, Akorri, and Marathon Technologies, where he contributed significantly as a Principal Release Engineer. His experience also includes leadership roles at THUNDERHEAD (ONE) LTD., where he served as Director of Release Automation and Sr. Director of Engineering Operations.
Achievements in Software Development
Throughout his career, Tim Foster has led initiatives that significantly improved software development processes. He introduced Thunderhead to the Accelerate study on lean software development and DevOps, facilitating a shift from quarterly to weekly releases. Additionally, he implemented a culture of postmortems for production incidents, which transitioned his engineering teams from reactive to proactive problem-solving.
Leadership in Start-ups
Tim Foster has been the lead at four start-ups, where he established and managed successful product development release processes. His leadership in these environments has contributed to the development of efficient workflows and enhanced team performance in software engineering.