Ryan A. Koval
Software Engineering, Architecture & Management
A multidisciplinary software leader with a strong foundation in engineering, architecture, and product strategy. Over the course of his career, he has consistently delivered high-impact solutions across diverse industries, blending technical depth with a keen eye for user experience and business alignment. His work spans early-stage startups to large-scale platforms, where he's driven innovation, built scalable systems, and guided teams through periods of rapid growth and change.
At the core of Ryan’s approach is a belief in clarity, resilience, and continuous improvement—values reflected in both the products he builds and the teams he leads. Whether designing complex systems, shaping product direction, or fostering high-performing engineering cultures, he brings a balance of strategic vision and pragmatic execution. His leadership is defined by thoughtful collaboration, accountability, and a relentless focus on delivering meaningful outcomes.
While he does strive for perfection, he also realizes that there is no silver bullet. Software exists purely in the confines of a business world and rarely the other way around; therefore, an immaculately coded product will likely mean nothing without customers or a business behind it. Ryan is firmly aware of this concept, and his design process is built around it. As such, extended discussions stressing over minor technical details that won't raise your bottom line or solve for long-term engineering problems are often hard for him to prioritize (although they can be fun to muse about in a social setting).
If you are looking for technical prowess that can architect and implement solutions of unparalleled quality and business value, look no further: scroll to see his skills and experience, view his formal resume, or contact him!
The Styled by CollectiveCo-founder / CTOJanuary 2025 to present
- Ryan led all engineering and product efforts to design, architect, and implement an ERP/CRM system for blind inventory management of fashion apparel, catering to private client luxury styling services.
- The platform managed over $2.8M in yearly client spend and maintained a consistent 30% keep rate for high-value luxury goods, often exceeding $20k per item.
The Styled by Collective is a private client personal styling firm leveraging elite human expertise with cutting-edge technology to offer seamless and exclusive high-touch wardrobe management experiences. We are redefining how private clients, retailers and industry professionals engage with personal style—powered by our proprietary digital platform. What began as a luxury styling service business has evolved into a category-defining fashion-tech company.
RobloxEngineering ManagerAugust 2021 to January 2025
- Working primarily within the Guilded team after its acquisition, Ryan directly managed 6+ engineers by facilitating the RoGRO corporate review process and by providing radical candor to bolster the performance of his direct reports.
- Served as technical lead on 7+ cross-functional initiatives involving 40+ collaborators across engineering, design, trust & safety, and community teams.
- High-impact projects include: a full editor rewrite; the Roblox universal rich text initiative; public-facing bot REST API; scalable big data science ETLs; CI/CD optimization and developer experience enhancements; Roblox↔Guilded OAuth integration; a ChatGPT-powered multiplayer AI chat bot
Roblox is an online game platform and game creation system developed by Roblox Corporation that allows users to program games and play games created by other users. Created by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel in 2004 and released in 2006, the platform hosts user-created games of multiple genres coded in the programming language Lua. For most of Roblox's history, it was relatively small, both as a platform and as a company. Roblox began to grow rapidly in the second half of the 2010s, and this growth has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Roblox is free to play, with in-game purchases available through a virtual currency called Robux. As of August 2020, Roblox had over 164 million monthly active users, including more than half of all American children under 16. Although Roblox has received generally positive reviews from critics.
GuildedSoftware EngineerNovember 2018 to August 2021
- Ryan was integral to the original core engineering team that secured a $7M Series A funding in April 2020 and ultimately the $90M acquisition by Roblox in August 2021.
- He spearheaded recruitment and management helping grow the engineering team from 7 to 21+ people with less than 15% turnover over two years.
- He employed growth engineering to elevate the product from nearly 0 to 110k+ DAU/0.9M+ MAU over 3 years
- He directed many product and engineering initiatives from end-to-end, including gathering user requirements, collaborating with the UX design team, and shipping code to production
- He served as a versatile full-stack engineer across web, desktop, mobile, backend, devops, CI/CD, cloud infrastructure, moderation/abuse, data stores, developer experience, and more
(Guilded was acquired by Roblox on August 16, 2021) Guilded is a VoIP, instant messaging and digital distribution platform designed by Guilded Inc. and owned by Roblox Corporation. Guilded is based in San Francisco. Users communicate with voice calls, video calls, text messaging, media and files in private chats or as part of communities called "guilds". Guilded was founded by Eli Brown, a former Facebook and Xbox employee. Guilded runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and iOS. Guilded is a Discord competitor that is primarily focused on video gaming communities, such as those focused on competitive gaming and esports. It provides features intended for video gaming clans, such as scheduling tools and integrated calendars. Guilded is developed by Guilded, Inc. which has been an independent product group of the Roblox Corporation since August 16, 2021.
LTK(formerly rewardStyle and LIKEtoKNOW.it)Senior Software EngineerFebruary 2016 to October 2018
- Ryan led front-end development for a self-service collaborations portal, where he managed an international team
- He helped craft two major versions of a screen-scraping infrastructure used to gather data from all influencers for a customer-facing recommendation engine and general business intelligence
- He helped transition the organization from a two-week deploy cycle to rapid continuous delivery by designing and implementing new core infrastructure patterns
- He revived multiple legacy node.js analytics projects plagued with stability problems and general disrepair
- He overhauled infrastructure configuration for another failing project in charge of syncing critical internal data throughout multiple systems
In 2010, rewardStyle was just an idea—a dream of how to simultaneously help brands and lifestyle creators monetize the digital space. Today, celebrating our 10th anniversary, we’re a global community of more than 350 team members, 150,000+ top-tier creators, and 1 million brands across more than 100 countries. Pioneering a proprietary ecosystem of innovative technology, strategic growth consulting, global brand partnerships, and expansive shopper distribution, we’ve done more than just monetize Creator Marketing—we created the industry and are now defining the next decade.
Bottle Rocket StudiosLead EngineerNovember 2015 to February 2016
- Ryan utilized his Scala experience to rapidly accelerate development of a complex eCommerce ordering solution for multiple high profile fast food and fast casual restaurants
Since our launch, Bottle Rocket has been at the forefront of the app revolution. We propelled forward-thinking brands through mobile strategy, design, and development. We push the limits of design, information architecture, and the capabilities of mobile platforms – and it shows by the way we connect users with information, brands, and entertainment. By day, we sweat the details and build awesome mobile experiences – and our passion doesn’t end there. After hours, we’re those people standing in line for the latest games and technology. We are a value-driven team of mature, self-motivated professionals that do what it takes to get the job done, but never stop improving ourselves and the services the we provide our clients.
Slalom ConsultingConsultantNovember 2013 to October 2015
- Ryan constructed core components for nearly all aspects of a multi-million dollar system prison telecommunication investigative tool
- He was designated as an authority to navigate Scala-centric AWS data processing pipelines for a prominent agricultural enterprise
Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Slalom Consulting has rapidly grown to more than 2,200 consultants and helps companies from the Fortune 500 to emerging businesses. We deliver award-winning solutions and innovation through a national network of local offices across 14 North American cities. Slalom can take on a full end-to-end project or only the key portion where we will add the most value. We can bring our own proven methods, work within a client’s framework, or work with a client to create a new delivery method. We want results for our clients, and we typically structure projects with smaller teams that deliver those results faster. Slalom has earned numerous national, regional, and local awards from our clients, partners, the media, and community organizations. Our executives are also frequently recognized on an individual basis for their leadership and business acumen.
CrederaConsultantAugust 2011 to October 2013
- Ryan interacted with and developed for nearly all aspects of a multi-million dollar automotive eCommerce website, which contained over 50 technology integrations and spanned both desktop & mobile platforms.
- He captained front-end integration team of a classic Spring MVC implementation for a marketing tool used by an international marketing giant.
Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Slalom Consulting has rapidly grown to more than 2,200 consultants and helps companies from the Fortune 500 to emerging businesses. We deliver award-winning solutions and innovation through a national network of local offices across 14 North American cities. Slalom can take on a full end-to-end project or only the key portion where we will add the most value. We can bring our own proven methods, work within a client’s framework, or work with a client to create a new delivery method. We want results for our clients, and we typically structure projects with smaller teams that deliver those results faster. Slalom has earned numerous national, regional, and local awards from our clients, partners, the media, and community organizations. Our executives are also frequently recognized on an individual basis for their leadership and business acumen.
Dallas Pedicabs(defunct)Freelance DeveloperFebruary 2013 to July 2013
- Ryan overhauled unmanageable consumer-facing website for this small startup in favor of a custom WordPress solution.
Since our inception in early 2011 we have been trying to make sustainable transportation in Dallas a reality, while providing an enjoyable experience to all of our patrons. Whether it is a ride to dinner, a bar, friend’s apartment or just to grab a bite to eat, a ride with Dallas Pedicabs is the right decision. We also cater to groups, weddings, sporting events, parking lots and awesome historic tours of certain areas of Dallas. As a company, our mission is to provide fun transportation for the residents of Dallas around Uptown, deter drunk driving, and bring a new sustainable business to the area.
Tampa Bay Radiation OncologyAdministrative AssistantMay 2010 to July 2010
- Ryan aided in various administrative jobs including faxing, mailing, filing, managing phone calls, and delivering packages.
- He coded in VBA to organize, process, and analyze physician consult spreadsheets for data mining purposes.
- He wrote macros to increase work efficiency surrounding repetitive computer-oriented tasks such as manual database information retrieval.
Tampa Bay Radiation Oncology (TBRO) formed in 2003, is a locally owned and physician managed organization committed to providing experienced, state of the art cancer treatments in a caring and professional manner. We practice in four free standing clinics, strategically located throughout the Tampa Bay Area to offer convenience to patients and state of the art planning capabilities offered at other major academic cancer centers across the country, so patients can receive their cancer care at home with support of family and friends.
Southern Methodist UniversityBachelor of Science, Computer Science (Minor in Mathematics)
A nationally ranked private university located near the heart of Dallas, SMU is a distinguished center for global research and teaching. SMU’s more than 12,000 diverse, high-achieving students come from all 50 states and over 80 countries to take advantage of the University’s small classes, meaningful research opportunities, leadership development, community service, international study and innovative programs. Students gathered on the quad SMU serves approximately 7,000 undergraduates and 5,000 graduate students through eight degree-granting schools: Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, Cox School of Business, Lyle School of Engineering, Meadows School of the Arts, Simmons School of Education and Human Development, Dedman School of Law, Perkins School of Theology and Moody School of Graduate and Advanced Studies. SMU is data driven, and its powerful supercomputing ecosystem – paired with entrepreneurial drive – creates an unrivaled environment for the University to deliver research excellence. Now in its second century of achievement, SMU is recognized for the ways it supports students, faculty and alumni as they become ethical, enterprising leaders in their professions and communities. SMU’s relationship with Dallas – the dynamic center of one of the nation’s fastest-growing regions – offers unique learning, research, social and career opportunities that provide a launch pad for global impact. SMU is nonsectarian in its teaching and committed to academic freedom and open inquiry.