I'M LEO, LEADER, FOUNDER & BUILDER

LEADERSHIP SCALE AI & PRODUCT

Engineering executive with 25+ years building high-performing teams and shipping products at scale. Founded multiple companies, led orgs through 10x growth, and built the systems behind products serving billions of users.

Let's talk

Engineering leader who builds and ships

From zero-to-one startups to billion-user platforms.

25+
Years of experience
Billions
Users served
Startup to Enterprise
Full range

Current Focus

Calliope AI

Calliope AI

A secure, AI-powered development workbench for teams that value engineering rigor. Multiple AI models, notebooks, code generation, RAG-powered data access, and SQL query generation. Built for professionals who keep humans in the loop.

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Veracall

Veracall

AI-powered communication and scheduling assistant. Smart call management, unified messaging, spam blocking, and voice-activated scheduling. For solo founders to remote teams who need control over their time.

Join waitlist →
Boilerworks

Boilerworks

Production-ready templates and frameworks for shipping faster. Built by CONFLICT for teams who want to skip the boilerplate and get to building.

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CONFLICT

CONFLICT

A full-service engineering shop for teams that need to ship. Cloud operations, backend systems, mobile apps, AI/ML, and infrastructure for healthcare, ecommerce, and compliance-heavy industries. We deliver where it counts.

Work with us →

Background

25+ years building engineering organizations and shipping products at scale. Founded companies, led teams through hypergrowth, and delivered systems serving billions.

I build orgs. I ship products. I drive results.
Engineering Leadership
Engineering Leadership
Built and led engineering orgs from 5 to 50+. Hired, mentored, and scaled teams through 10x growth. Track record of building high-trust, high-velocity cultures that ship.
Product & AI
Product & AI
Shipped products from zero-to-one and scaled them to millions. Currently building AI-first products. Hands-on technical leader who stays close to the code.
Scale & Reliability
Scale & Reliability
Architected systems handling billions of requests. Led SRE at Wikimedia, built platform teams at Grindr during 37x growth. Infrastructure at scale is my wheelhouse.
Security & Compliance
Security & Compliance
Built security organizations from scratch. Led companies to first-time PCI compliance. $6M+ annual cost reductions through strategic infrastructure optimization.

Selected Work

Wikimedia Foundation

Wikimedia Foundation

Led engineering teams for Wikipedia—top 10 global website, billions of monthly requests. Owned platform reliability, incident response transformation, and infrastructure strategy with org-wide impact.

Backcountry.com

Backcountry.com

VP-level leadership across TechOps and InfoSec (34 engineers). Delivered $6M annual cost reduction. Built security organization from zero and led company to first PCI compliance.

Grindr

Grindr

First infrastructure hire—built the engineering team that scaled the platform 37x (400K to 15M users). Architected systems handling 5M concurrent users and millions of TPS.

Leo Mata

Recent Experience

Founder & CEO, Calliope AI

Building AI-first developer tools from zero-to-one. Defining product vision, leading engineering, shipping to market. Multi-model AI workbench for teams that value engineering rigor.

Founder & Managing Director, CONFLICT

Built and lead a distributed engineering organization. Full P&L ownership, client delivery, and technical strategy across AI, cloud, and security for enterprise clients.

Engineering Manager, Wikimedia Foundation

Led SRE teams for Wikipedia—a top 10 global website. Owned observability platform, incident response transformation, and infrastructure strategy serving billions of monthly requests.

Manager TechOps, Backcountry.com

CTO direct report leading 34 engineers across TechOps and InfoSec. Delivered $6M annual cost savings, built security org from zero, and led company to first PCI compliance.

Trusted by

Backcountry
Stance
Cheetah Digital
Zonos
60 Hertz

Latest Blog Posts

What's Next: Regions, Cynefin, and Beyond
L
posted by admin
November 25, 2025

What's Next: Regions, Cynefin, and Beyond

The Wardley Map PR is in draft, working through code review. Here’s what’s on the roadmap once the core implementation lands. Immediate …

Read More →
Deep Dive: Anatomy of a Mermaid Diagram Type
L
posted by admin
November 22, 2025

Deep Dive: Anatomy of a Mermaid Diagram Type

For those curious about the internals, here’s how a Mermaid diagram type comes together. This is the architecture I followed to build Wardley …

Read More →
Building the PR
L
posted by admin
November 17, 2025

Building the PR

Time to actually build Wardley Map support for Mermaid. Here’s the journey from “I should do this” to a working PR. Understanding …

Read More →