Skilled. Courageous. Value Driven.

Meet Charles Plucker, Software Engineer

Leading from the front. Embodied.

Leading from the front means leading with your actions. I bring all of myself to the things I am passionate about. I am uniquely positioned as someone who has a deep desire to build enchanting products balanced by my curiosity of people and the systems needed for success. My passion lies in building the machine that builds the machine.

While some leaders become leaders so they can enforce their opinions, I am a leader who leads to bring forth the genius of the team. I excel at cultivating consensus and communicating our tradeoffs to the business so that our products can mature elegantly.

My proudest contributions have been ones with measurable impacts: Reducing project cancellations by 25%. Implementing a message bus system to have disparate parts of the system gain a shared state with direct impacts to our customers. Improving observability and fixing systematic failures. Strengthening our CI/CD pipeline reducing production outages.

If you think I would be a good fit for your teams, please reach out! I’d love to hear about your dreams.

  • Torres Del Paine, Patagonia

    Technical Leader

    I have over 13 years of experience working on high output teams making products that delight our customers. My passion lies in being part of a high functioning team that prioritizes long term quality over quick wins. I like to emphasize full test coverages, observability, and leading Sprint Planning. I believe that being invested in the product cycle early ensures that we build the Right Product for our customers and leads to increased long term velocity.

  • Lago Grey, Patagonia

    Courageous

    I courageously and adeptly articulate my needs. By understanding the why behind my feelings and those of others, I am able to anticipate, and articulate inefficiencies in our team dynamics. I heavily contribute to bringing a team from forming to performing. It has also been important to me to contribute to conversations around equity and company culture. My LinkedIn recommendations are a testament to these ideals.

  • Mirador Britanico, Patagonia

    Values Driven

    Our values define who we are. I lead with my own as well as my team’s values. By having a clear understanding of what we value, alignment is easeful, motivation increases, and psychological safety gets prioritized. I am kind, honest, hard-working, and pride-driven.

Accolades

  • Charles is a strong engineer who can both drive complex work and requirements (especially work that crosses multiple team ownership boundaries). He has a keen sense on technical debt vs over-architecture and raises important questions to the team to ensure the right tradeoffs are made. […] But probably his strongest ability is in inculcating a healthy team culture.

    Matthew Manela - Software Engineering Lead

  • He was never scared to take on large refactors and introduce new technologies into the tech stack. […] Charles was key to ensuring a culture of safety and trust in our team. On weeks where I felt like I was not performing at my greatest, Charles always had my back and helped me recover.

    Rafi Yagudin - Senior Software Engineer

  • Charles is by far one of the best developers I've ever worked with […] In the past when I've done backlog grooming with teams, it's been a fairly slow and painful meeting […], but he helped to bring so much energy and curiosity to the meetings that encouraged others to do the same. His questions and thoughts were insightful and often related to future-proofing short-term solutions, which served us well in the fast paced environment we worked in. […] His contribution to team morale helped to make this team my favorite that I've ever worked with.

    Mary Wrenn - Senior Product Manager

  • Charles cares greatly about the quality of his code and the success of his team. He's an excellent collaborator and communicator and he doesn't shy away from asking the hard questions.

    Cody Bonney - Technical Director

  • I would say adding Charles to any engineering team would vastly improve the teams performance and morale.

    Nicholas Peceniak - Senior Software Engineer

  • He has a knack for communicating with design team members at the appropriate level technical depth and he explains technical concepts with clarity and patience.

    David Armentrout - Product Management Leader

View 13 LinkedIn Recommendations

Stop Doing, Start Being

The best performing teams are the ones with high degrees of psychological safety. If a team feels comfortable receiving and sharing feedback, they perform better. But what does it actually take for someone to be able to receive feedback and understand, internalize, and potentially disagree with it? I have come to believe that the answer is trust.

I build trust, through my actions, but especially through my way of being. I often find externalized perspectives that value us for what we do, but I believe we should be valued for who we are. Leadership at the highest level is a transition from doing into being. Here are some things that capture my being:

I prioritize business needs and articulate maintainability tradeoffs.

I approach problems with a systems mindset and avoid unintended consequences.

I meet my commitments and always achieve co-created deadlines.

I lead conversations around equity and team culture.

I value face to face interactions in person.

I am proud of my written and spoken communications.