Daniela Kinsella

About Me

I'm a principal-caliber engineering leader who combines deep architectural expertise with a founder's mindset to future-proof the health of mission-critical software. I've spent my career at the intersection of legacy modernization, cloud architecture, and emerging AI technologies.

Originally from Germany, I've built and led teams in Berlin and New York City. I founded and ran a profitable web agency for 8 years before returning to hands-on engineering. Today I live in Jersey City with my husband Keith, our Lagotto Romagnolo Rasmus, and two cats Fred and Mojo.

I'm passionate about sharing what I've learned and am available for conference speaking on topics like legacy modernization, AI-powered development workflows, and building engineering cultures that last.

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Legacy Modernizer

Expert in reverse-engineering and modernizing 20+ year-old mission-critical systems with zero production downtime.

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GenAI Innovator

Operationalizing AI strategies and implementing AI-agent workflows to accelerate engineering.

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Cloud Specialist

Decoupling monoliths into resilient, event-driven AWS Serverless architectures.

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Founder Turned Engineer

8 years as CEO gives me the ability to balance architectural health with business reality.

Experience

The New York Times

Staff Software Engineer, Enterprise Technology

Dec 2023 – Present

New York, NY

Technical lead and primary architect for the modernization of the Publishing Technology division, stewarding the systems responsible for the nightly printing of the newspaper.

Architecting the replacement of 4 mission-critical legacy production systems (20+ years old) with resilient, cloud-native AWS Serverless solutions — zero production disruption.
Co-leading the Enterprise Technology GenAI initiative, designing AI-powered agentic workflows to accelerate complex system rewrites.
Driving event-driven architecture adoption and infrastructure modernization including Terraform upgrades and CI/CD migration.
Formally mentoring engineers across Finance, Delivery, and Product departments.

Patch.com

Tech Lead & Senior Software Engineer

May 2018 – Dec 2023

New York, NY

Tech lead and full-stack senior engineer for a news platform serving 20+ million monthly users with hyper-local news across the United States.

Engineered core services using TypeScript, Node.js, React, PHP, and Shell Scripting.
Architected concurrent job queues with AWS SQS, Lambda, SNS, EventBridge, and Step Functions.
Built backend caching solutions with Fastly for top Google PageSpeed Insights scores.
Mentored and trained engineers, conducted code reviews and technical workshops.

NameFace

Co-Founder & Senior Software Engineer

Nov 2015 – Sep 2016

New York, NY

Developed a facial recognition platform for news and event photographers to identify personalities in their photos.

Built upload, naming, and metadata workflows with integrations to Shutterstock, AP, and Getty Images.
Hired a team of four. Pitched investors and handled customer acquisition.

HelloPlugin GmbH

Founder & CEO

Sep 2007 – Nov 2015

Berlin, Germany

Founded and scaled a profitable full-service web development agency serving enterprise clients.

Clients included Mercedes Benz, Adidas, Electronic Arts, MTV, Telekom, BBDO, Axel Springer, and Bayer.
Profitable from year one. Recruited and mentored eight full-time engineers.
Managed business development, project planning, and customer acquisition.

Earlier Career

Director of PM, Technical PM, Senior Engineer

1999 – 2007

Berlin, Germany

Built the foundation of a 25+ year career across gaming, financial services, and digital agencies.

GameDuell GmbH: Director of Project Management — scaled team from 10 to 30+ engineers.
GFKL Financial Services: Technical Product Manager — managed distributed teams in Lithuania and Armenia.
Freelance & Pixelpark AG: Senior Software Engineer.

AWS Certified Cloud PractitionerAWS Generative AI Developer (In Progress)