Neil Lavelle

My passion is People Engineering — taking a global group of individuals spread across time zones, products, and priorities, and turning them into a team that ships things that matter. Leading from the front, managing the chaos, inspiring people to do it the right way. The harder the problem, the happier I am. 15+ years putting AI/ML into production — not since ChatGPT, since 2010. Conversational AI engines analyzing customer feedback at scale (Fizzback/NICE), NLP-driven reference extraction (RefME), GitHub Copilot integration across a 150-person engineering org (8x8), and now full AI transformation at Peek Travel. At Peek I inherited an engineering organization with zero AI capabilities and within 18 months embedded AI/ML across the platform and development lifecycle. Shipped Peek Copilot (Arival 2024 Innovation Award), a dynamic pricing engine delivering 5–20% revenue lift, and AI agents for fraud detection and automation. Created PeekLabs as a skunkworks delivery vehicle — 30+ Apps shipped at 2–3x developer velocity. Drove AI-assisted tooling adoption across the entire org using Claude, OpenAI, and n8n automation pipelines. 20% productivity uplift measured via cycle time and throughput, 40% improvement in team operational efficiency, elite DORA metrics. Closed two strategic acquisitions — ACME Ticketing and Connect&GO — and a $70M Series D (Springcoast Partners), scaling the platform to 150M+ consumers and $7B+ in bookings. 25+ years building global engineering teams that deliver at scale — up to 250+ people, 5 9's reliability. Led the ACME acquisition at Peek having previously run it as Head of Engineering & Product seven years earlier. Absorbed a 250-person Fuze R&D organization at 8x8 with less than 5% non-regrettable attrition. Drove the 8x8 GTM turnaround — a strategic assignment fixing a failing Quote-to-Cash ecosystem. Transformed multiple organizations from infrequent, high-risk releases into continuous delivery — the kind of Agile that shows up in cycle time and deployment frequency, not just ceremonies. W hat I'm interested in: the intersection of AI transformation, platform engineering at scale, and building engineering cultures where great people do their best work. Always happy to talk.