Justin Conway

Director, Web Design & Engineering | Chicago, IL

Professional Summary

Engineering leader with more than twenty years of experience building and leading teams that ship fast, accessible, and reliable web experiences. A player-coach at heart, I am someone who still cares about the details in the code, but measures success by the confidence and autonomy of the people writing it. I recently led a full modernization of Sprout's marketing web stack to Next.js and AWS, balancing performance, scalability, and business impact while keeping the culture steady and collaborative.

Selected Achievements

  • •Led migration of Sprout's marketing platform to Next.js and AWS, consolidating several CMSs into one predictable pipeline. Achieved a 33% increase in trial conversions and moved Core Web Vitals solidly into passing ranges.
  • •Sustained 99.9 percent uptime for eight consecutive years, including through major AWS outages.
  • •Turned an accessibility lawsuit threat into a department-wide culture shift, making accessibility a release requirement.
  • •Introduced AI-assisted workflows to triage bugs and generate pull requests, freeing engineers to focus on higher-value work.
  • •Defined monitoring and paging standards with PagerDuty and DataDog, creating calmer, clearer incident responses.
  • •Hired and coached multiple engineers who went on to earn Sprout's Value Awards for impact and leadership.

Core Competencies

  • •Leadership & Culture: Servant leadership • Team empowerment • Inclusive hiring • Cross-functional collaboration • Mentorship
  • •Front-End Systems: React • Next.js • TypeScript • Node.js • Accessibility • Performance optimization
  • •Infrastructure & DevOps: AWS (CloudFront, Lambda@Edge, EC2, S3) • Terraform • GitHub Actions • CI/CD automation
  • •Monitoring & Reliability: DataDog • Grafana • PagerDuty • SLA management • Observability metrics

Professional Experience

Sprout Social — Chicago, IL

Director, Web Design & Engineering | 2015 – Present

  • •Lead a multidisciplinary team of 11 (8 engineers, 3 designers) responsible for Sprout's public web presence. Partner with Product, Brand, and Revenue teams to deliver scalable, accessible, and data-driven digital experiences.
  • •Drove modernization of the marketing technology stack, migrating to Next.js and AWS CloudFront with Terraform and Lambda@Edge.
  • •Unified CI/CD pipelines and data integrations, increasing predictability and developer confidence.
  • •Built resilient monitoring and alerting with DataDog and PagerDuty, sustaining 99.9 percent SLA reliability.
  • •Embedded accessibility as a release requirement across all brand properties.
  • •Introduced AI automation for bug triage and PR creation, reducing manual backlog overhead.
  • •Fostered a culture of trust and autonomy, with three team members receiving Sprout Value Awards.
  • •Completed one of Sprout's fastest hiring cycles (28 days from kickoff to acceptance).

Earlier roles

Senior Engineering Manager • Engineering Manager • Senior Web Engineer • Web Engineer

  • •Hired, coached, and mentored engineers across multiple teams; received company awards for technical innovation and inclusive leadership.
  • •Built marketing-site infrastructure and alerting pipelines still relied on across the organization.
  • •Collaborated with design to launch high-performance, conversion-focused brand experiences.

Earlier Career Experience

StageBloc — Chicago, IL

Front-End Developer | 2013 – 2015

  • •Developed responsive interfaces and optimized performance for clients including Metallica, Kenny Chesney, and Kid Rock.

530MediaLab — Long Beach, CA

Lead Front-End Developer | 2011 – 2013

  • •Led a team of eight developers building interactive brand sites for lifestyle and streetwear clients; managed version-control workflows and mentored junior staff.

Recognition & Awards

Sprout Social Global Leadership Model Award – 2023

Sprout Social Company Value Award for Technical Innovation – 2019