Zach Fitzgerald
I build and lead where the stakes are real.
Staff Software Engineer bringing technical leadership and depth to enterprise products. Currently at Degreed.
Based in Greater Salt Lake Area
Zach is the only person I’ve worked with that is both extremely well-versed in his craft and also a great communicator and leader.
What I bring
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Award-winning software at scale
A longtime technical leader for best-in-class software with millions of paid, active users at the world's top 100 enterprises.
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Culture and mentorship
A proven culture-setter, lifelong learner, and nurturing mentor, with a track record in startups, unicorns, and enterprises.
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Craftsmanship
Mastery earned continuously across decades of frameworks, systems, paradigms, teams, and philosophies.
About me
My career has been spent on work where the stakes are real, but those stakes are only real because there are real people behind them.
Meaningful financial impact, reputations on the line, high-volume government transactions with no margin for error, large enterprise clients with careful needs of compliance, accessibility, and regulation. The cares and delights of the people behind that work are what continue to motivate me to think a little harder, lead with more empathy, and go the extra step.
I'm a staff engineer with a servant-leader disposition. I love to listen, and I like things that make people's lives a little better. I've been building web software for a long time, and the thread running through it all is this: leave the customers, the product, the codebase, and the humans behind it all better than I found them.
Sometimes that means plunging into the deep end of the front end to make an experience less frictional and more accessible. Sometimes it means gathering up peers who are smarter than me to come up with a performance fix. Either way, people are what matter; software lets us make it happen.
Talk to me about
- Technical leadership
- AI skills/agents/workflows
- Architecture
- System design
- Full-stack
- Front-end depth
- Mobile apps
- Compliance
- A11yAccessibility
- L10nLocalization
- Startups
- Large-scale SaaS
- Coaching & mentoring
Off the clock
I love software and often code in my free time, with AI or the old-school way. I also really enjoy:
- The outdoors
- Mindfulness practice
- Pets & animals
- Retro video games
- Fingerpicked guitar
- Friends & family
Work history
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Staff Software Engineer (IC6)
to now
Degreed
Propelling change within an AI-first organization, I'm leading training sessions and building the custom skills, agents, and workflows that increase engineering productivity and grow real AI-fluency across teams. I also maintain staff-level responsibilities, operating as both Product Lead and Technical Lead. This includes setting product direction and priorities to executive goals, while owning our division's architecture and technical execution.
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Lead Software Engineer
to
Learn In
Brought enterprise technical leadership to an early-stage EdTech startup. Degreed acquired Learn In, and we stayed autonomous through this period while I led the push to make the product enterprise-ready. That meant a deep accessibility audit with remediation, tooling, and training; a localization framework; a multi-currency system I designed and helped build; and a co-led rewrite of our email platform. I also coached a methodical integration with Degreed's systems and customer base, introduced more productive workflows, and steered the team toward sustainable architectural patterns.
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Technical Lead
to
Degreed
Led full-stack development and architecture for a new product, Skill Coach, working directly with many of our largest customers, executives, and stakeholders, and served as a primary mentor to several engineers. At the same time, I led the front-end developers across the broader engineering organization, setting standards and technical direction during a critical period of growth and technical evolution.
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Senior Software Engineer I & II
to
Degreed
Early hire. In my first week, I pitched and built the company's web extensions product, which is still part of the product line more than a decade later. As subject-matter expert and lead developer, I owned core features, authorization flows, localization, WCAG accessibility compliance, and payment processing, including its role in SOC 2 audits. I built the multi-tenant framework that enabled our largest enterprise clients, trained teams on OWASP and XSS protection, and established front-end best practices across teams as Degreed became a category-creating EdTech unicorn.
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Software Engineer
to
Corporation Service Company
Lead developer of the company's e-recording software, processing official government transactions at high volume with effectively zero margin for error. Built on .NET Framework and Angular as an early adopter, I helped establish patterns and standards across the enterprise through its UI architecture group. I also built and shipped the company's first-ever mobile app for iOS and Android.
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Web Developer
to
Money Tree, Toronto
Worked directly with a celebrity investor from TV's Shark Tank. Our team built the company's suite of extensible web application and marketing software products, which drew hundreds of thousands of sales at launch.
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Web Developer
to
Self-employed, Salt Lake City
Full-stack development and design for agencies, startups, businesses, and prominent clients. I hired and led my own teams across simultaneous projects, moving fluidly between roles as each project demanded.
Working with me
From the start, Zach stood out as one of the most empathetic, humble engineers I’ve ever worked with. His calm, collaborative style creates a safe space for problem-solving and learning, which makes a big difference on any team. … I’d jump at the chance to work with him again.
He consistently brought a thoughtful, steady approach to projects and was the kind of person who made collaboration easy and enjoyable.
Go ahead, let's connect!
I'd love to hear from you.