Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Certification
Timeline
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MICHAEL A. BIRDSONG

Winter Garden,FL

Summary

Results-oriented Software Engineering Leader with 20+ years of experience driving innovation, leading global engineering teams, and delivering enterprise-grade applications across diverse industries. Skilled in building scalable solutions, optimizing cloud operations (AWS, Azure), and leading full SDLC lifecycles with Agile best practices. Recognized for boosting delivery speed by 15%, reducing downtime through 3x support backlog cuts, and engineering zero-downtime deployments that improved system reliability by 99.99%. Adept at mentoring cross-functional teams, streamlining processes, and aligning product development with organizational goals. Known for turning complex problems into scalable solutions, consistently improving productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction. Proven record of winning innovation awards, and sustaining high-performance cultures.

Overview

29
29
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification

Work History

Software Engineering Manager

Verint Systems Inc.
01.2022 - 03.2025
  • Led a cross-functional Agile team of 7 software/QA engineers; enforced SDLC best practices to deliver features 15% faster and with tighter quality gates.
  • Reduced crashes and production incidents, cutting the support ticket backlog by 3× while customer volume grew 50%.
  • Built operational dashboards with real-time alerting/anomaly detection; improved MTTR by 20% and increased uptime across global cloud estates.
  • Implemented 24/7 on-call rotations and post-incident reviews to strengthen SRE discipline and response consistency.
  • Orchestrated zero-downtime product deployments on AWS/Azure by implementing the canary strategy, reducing outage risk 99.99% and lifting perceived availability.
  • Translated customer requirements into actionable epics/stories; improved team velocity 5% and predictability via estimation and execution tracking.
  • Drove multi-team initiatives (8+ engineers) by clarifying ownership and decision paths, finishing ~5% faster than plan.
  • Implemented a replacement modeling algorithm that improved scheduling capacity and accuracy by 10%, enabling better workforce planning across large-scale rollouts.

Principal Engineer

Verint Systems Inc.
01.2016 - 12.2021
  • Designed and shipped Workforce Management (WFM) Time-Off Bidding, cutting processing time by 10% for deployments supporting 5,000+ employees across multiple regions.
  • Absorbed sustaining responsibilities after support centralization closure and reduced customer tickets by 75% through targeted fixes, guardrails, and proactive defect elimination.
  • Led three backlog-reduction waves that eliminated repeat defects and stabilized production, decreasing tickets by 10% and improving customer satisfaction and NPS scores.
  • Integrated CI/CD pipelines across development teams, shortening release cycles by 25% while improving deployment reliability and reducing post-release defects.
  • Partnered with Product Management to redesign customer-facing APIs, enhancing scalability, improving adoption, and enabling smoother integrations with enterprise clients.
  • Mentored junior engineers, raising code quality standards and reducing rework cycles by 30%.

Manager / Team Lead

Verint Systems Inc.
09.2006 - 12.2015
  • Directed a blended team of 10+ onshore and offshore engineers to deliver major Quality Monitoring features on schedule, reducing user-reported defects by more than 10%.
  • Architected and launched a reporting dashboard framework that was adopted by 15+ engineering teams, accelerating widget delivery timelines by approximately 20% per team.
  • Balanced competing priorities of roadmap execution, technical debt remediation, and hot-fix intake to maintain release cadence without compromising production stability.
  • Introduced automated testing and code coverage standards that cut regression defects by 35% and improved the overall confidence in release readiness.
  • Led multi-team integration projects with Operations and Support, reducing deployment rollbacks by 20% and increasing release success rates across global clients.
  • Championed Agile best practices, including daily standups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives, which boosted team velocity and throughput by 15% in two consecutive quarters.
  • Coached and promoted junior engineers into senior roles, improving retention rates while building a sustainable, high-performing team culture over multiple years.

Senior Software Engineer

Witness Systems Inc.
10.1999 - 08.2006

Software Engineer

Synergistics Solutions, Inc.
10.1997 - 09.1999

Programmer III & IV

GTE Data Services
06.1996 - 09.1997

Software Programmer

Lockheed Martin Space & Range Systems
12.1995 - 05.1996

Education

B.S. - Computer Science

University of Central Florida
Orlando, FL

A.S. - Computer Information & Systems Analysis

Lake-Sumter Community College
Leesburg, FL

Skills

  • Management Tools: Agile, Scrum, Jira, GitHub
  • Languages & Frameworks: C, C, Java, Spring/Spring Boot, React/JavaScript, HTML
  • Technologies: AWS, Microsoft SQL, Oracle, REST APIs, DataDog, Harness, Jenkins, OpsGenie, MS Power BI
  • Core Competencies: Root Cause Analysis, Product Development, Operational Optimization

Certification

  • Certified ScrumMaster (Scrum Alliance)
  • Verint/Witness: 2× I2 Innovation, Passion Award, 2× Quarterly Customer Service
  • GTE Data Services: 2× Individual Achievement

Timeline

Software Engineering Manager

Verint Systems Inc.
01.2022 - 03.2025

Principal Engineer

Verint Systems Inc.
01.2016 - 12.2021

Manager / Team Lead

Verint Systems Inc.
09.2006 - 12.2015

Senior Software Engineer

Witness Systems Inc.
10.1999 - 08.2006

Software Engineer

Synergistics Solutions, Inc.
10.1997 - 09.1999

Programmer III & IV

GTE Data Services
06.1996 - 09.1997

Software Programmer

Lockheed Martin Space & Range Systems
12.1995 - 05.1996

A.S. - Computer Information & Systems Analysis

Lake-Sumter Community College

B.S. - Computer Science

University of Central Florida

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MICHAEL A. BIRDSONG