Rick Benavidez

LEANSTACK

Co-Founder

• — Joined Ash Maurya (best-selling author of Running Lean) to transform existing entrepreneurship education app into a comprehensive "accelerator-in-a-box" platform, adding cohort management, founder portfolio tracking, and structured learning paths that guide entrepreneurs from concept validation through product-market fit.
• — Built LEANSpark, an AI co-founder agent on falcon.rb and RubyLLM, to support business idea development and model validation. Designed chat-based UX for complex multi-step workflows, implemented evaluation frameworks to drive model selection based on task requirements, and applied KV caching and prompt optimization to meaningfully reduce inference cost and latency.
• — Drive all technical architecture, infrastructure, and design/UX decisions for a multi-service Rails platform deployed on Render, AWS, and Cloudflare. Sole on-call owner for all production services; maintain observability via AppSignal, track slow queries with explain analyze, and sustain zero-downtime deployments across the full stack.
• — Coach dozens of startup founders and enterprise innovation teams through structured framework sessions, bridging technical product decisions with customer development methodology.
• — Balance hands-on development with sales demos, customer success, and infrastructure operations in a resource-constrained startup environment.

PhishMe (Cofense)

Software Engineering Manager

• — Managed a team of 8+ engineers across multiple scrum teams in cybersecurity SaaS environment, maintaining accountability for software delivery and sprint velocity.
• — Guided team through multiple major architecture transitions including a migration toward microservices, maintaining zero-downtime deployments and backward compatibility for enterprise customers. Drove technical planning and system design across multiple workstreams, collaborating with Product, UX, and Security to reduce production incidents through shared SLAs and monitoring practices.
• — Built remote-first team culture supporting career growth through structured coaching, goal-setting, and technical mentorship. Managed distributed team including offshore contractors across Eastern Europe, establishing async communication practices and shared delivery standards across multiple time zones.

Student Loan Genius

CTO

• — Architected the core loan repayment platform from the ground up on Rails and Postgres. Hired and developed a 6-person team, establishing coding standards, career growth frameworks, and CI/CD pipelines, and iterated rapidly on product-market fit based on employer feedback loops and user research with 50+ customer organizations.
• — Achieved ISO 27001 certification and implemented ISMS, enabling enterprise sales and unlocking partnerships with Fortune 500 companies.
• — Represented company in technical due diligence, customer security reviews, and RFP responses, directly contributing to close of key deals.

Communication Service For The Deaf

Director of Software Development

promoted from Sr. Software Engineer → Manager → Director

• — Led development of first-of-its-kind national online marketplace connecting deaf and hard-of-hearing community to sign language interpreters, managing product evolution from private beta through public launch.
• — Managed and grew team from 3 to 12 engineers, establishing sustainable development practices in HIPAA-regulated environment.
• — Drove technical decisions on WebRTC implementation for video interpreting, handling real-time communication challenges across variable network conditions.
• — Championed TDD/BDD, continuous deployment, and code review standards, reducing deployment cycle from weekly to daily releases.

ActiveProspect

Sr. Web Developer

• — Shipped 4 standalone products from concept to production: a lead validation API, consent management system, batch file upload manager, and custom form and registration path builder, serving 200+ enterprise customers at a bootstrapped B2B SaaS startup.
• — Contributed to all layers of a high-throughput distributed system processing large volumes of lead data across multiple services, working across development, operations, and customer support in a small-team environment.
• — Patent #11610182 for work on an electronic lead verification system.

Early Career

Web Developer & Systems Integration Specialist

• — Web engineering and systems integration roles at Strategic Forecasting (geopolitical intelligence), Mindshare Interactive (non-profit digital agency), EdgeCloud (consulting), and early-stage startups. Experience includes Python, PHP, Perl, MySQL, Drupal, and WordPress development.