Craig Campbell

The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus needed software solutions but had no internal engineering capability. I was brought in to build that practice from scratch — hiring engineers, establishing processes, managing client relationships, and delivering real products to demanding stakeholders in a regulated environment.

This wasn't a typical startup 0-to-1. It was building a sustainable professional software shop inside a large institution: procurement cycles, compliance requirements, academic stakeholders, and a need for solutions that would outlast any one engineer.

From the start, I owned the full arc of each engagement — not just delivery. That meant sitting with stakeholders to define what they actually needed (which was often different from what they initially asked for), translating those needs into requirements my team could execute on, and building and managing the backlogs that kept us aligned sprint over sprint.

I ran regular demos to gather feedback early, before work was too far along to change course. This kept stakeholders engaged and gave the team a continuous signal on whether we were building the right thing. Over time this model — where I was both the technical lead and the relationship owner — became how we acquired new work, as departments saw results and came back with new problems to solve.

The most significant project was a custom platform for ECHO Colorado, a statewide program that trains healthcare providers through virtual case consultations. They were running seven separate applications — scheduling, case management, reporting, communications, and more — with no integration between them.

I worked directly with ECHO leadership to map their workflows, define requirements across all seven systems, and design a unified architecture that could replace everything without disrupting active programs. We delivered iteratively, migrating program by program, with stakeholders validating each piece before we moved on. The result was a single multi-tenant, role-based SaaS platform serving 10,000+ in-state users — which was later licensed to Oregon and Idaho, adding 5,000+ users across 3 states.

In parallel with ECHO, I led delivery of a CDC-funded dental evaluation platform for the Colorado Department of Public Health. This engagement required six months of requirements gathering with agency stakeholders before a single line of code was written — translating complex public health workflows into a multi-tenant architecture with role-based access control built on React and AWS ECS/Fargate. I oversaw engineering execution through the full delivery lifecycle, resulting in a production system that streamlined dental assessments for the agency.

Beyond delivery, I drove contract acquisition through sustained stakeholder relationships — acquiring 10 major contracts and 40+ smaller engagements with a combined portfolio value of $5M+ over six years. Departments saw results and came back with new problems to solve.

Over those six years I hired, onboarded, and developed a team of six engineers. I ran regular one-on-ones focused on growth, not just status — understanding what each person wanted to develop and creating real opportunities for them to do it. Three engineers received significant internal promotions (two to Lead, one to Manager) during my tenure.