CiviForm: the public record, and my role in it
Role: Director of Engineering, CiviForm, at Exygy since August 2026 · 2026–present
CiviForm is the open-source benefits-application platform four city and state governments run in production. I was recruited in August 2026 to lead its engineering. This page is what the first month held, and what remains the platform’s record rather than mine.
Evidence boundary
- Built
- In the first month: a security posture audit, cloud cost actuals, delivery metrics, a team assessment and staffing recommendation, and hands-on AWS infrastructure work.
- Observed
- The platform runs in production for four city and state governments, including Seattle and Arkansas. That record predates me and is the platform’s, not mine.
- Not proved
- Any outcome of those first-month decisions yet: roadmap accuracy, team health, or pricing results. I speak here for myself, not for Exygy or CiviForm.
Selected measures
- city and state governments running CiviForm in production, including Seattle and Arkansas
- 4
- release train the four-person engineering team ships on
- Biweekly
CiviForm (opens in a new tab) is an open-source platform that lets governments offer one unified application across many benefit programs, originally built with Google.org and now stewarded by Exygy (opens in a new tab). It runs in production for four city and state governments, including the City of Seattle (opens in a new tab) and the State of Arkansas (opens in a new tab), on a Java/Play stack, with a four-person engineering team shipping on a biweekly release train. I was recruited to lead engineering.
The first month
- Rebuilt the operating picture: a security posture audit, cloud cost actuals, and real delivery metrics for roadmap planning.
- Delivered a team assessment and staffing recommendation to leadership.
- Partnered with product leadership on go-to-market pricing while supervising two Google.org fellowship workstreams and contributing hands-on to AWS infrastructure work.
Where it came from
The City of Seattle built it with Google.org Fellows (opens in a new tab) and launched it in 2021; Exygy has been the product steward since 2023. The project is governed by a governance committee of its member organizations and by product and technical design committees, with Exygy as the stewarding organization; the governance documentation (opens in a new tab) sets that out. Beyond Seattle and Arkansas, Charlotte (opens in a new tab) and Bloomington (opens in a new tab) run their own instances. The code is Apache-2.0 on GitHub (opens in a new tab).
This page describes public facts about the platform and my own work in the role. It is not a statement by Exygy or by the CiviForm project.