Engineering Leadership & Strategic Partnership

Lee Tsai

Driving technical excellence through collaborative leadership. Director of Software Engineering at Capital One | Founder of Pragmatic Increments LLC.

I bridge the gap between technical complexity and business strategy. As a Director of Software Engineering at Capital One and the founder of Pragmatic Increments LLC, my focus is on fostering collaborative partnerships that drive measurable technical excellence. Whether spearheading AI accelerators or scaling engineering organizations, I lead with a grounded, analytical approach shaped by my background at NYU Stern and the University of Pennsylvania.

Current Initiative

Pragmatic Increments

A boutique consultancy bridging complex engineering challenges and measurable business outcomes through iterative, result-driven technical leadership.

Selected Impact
$10MM+
Budget Oversight
98%
Disaster Recovery Cost Reduction
150+
Third-Party Integrations Scaled
Core Focus Areas

Engineering Operations

Scaling cultures and systems that deliver at institutional grade.

AI Strategy & Acceleration

Spearheading initiatives that integrate frontier tech into existing workflows.

Cross-Functional Partnership

Aligning engineering roadmaps with executive business objectives.

FinTech Innovation

Navigating regulated financial systems with modern cloud architecture.

Professional Journey
Director of Software Engineering, Capital One Jul 2025 – Present
  • Lead a platform organization of seven teams and 40 engineers with accountability across strategy, roadmap, and platform architecture.
  • Scaled enterprise integrations from 30+ toward 150+, aligning architecture and business leadership on target-state design.
  • Own labor strategy and org scale-up across a $10MM budget.
AI Accelerator Lead, Capital One Feb 2026 – Present
  • Spearheading a 6-week AI accelerator with VP+ partners to embed frontier capabilities into enterprise workflows.
Senior Engineering Manager, Capital One May 2022 – Jul 2025
  • Built a system-of-record platform on AWS and scaled adoption from greenfield to thousands of daily users.
  • Partnered across architecture, product, and business teams to translate target-state direction into execution.
Engineering Manager & Tech Lead, Capital One Apr 2017 – Jul 2021
  • Delivered multiple 0-to-1 platform programs, including a mainframe-to-AWS migration and lending workflow modernization.
Engineering Manager, Intuit Mailchimp Jul 2021 – May 2022
  • Modernized the development environment for 300+ engineers and drove organization-wide MVP rollout.
Investment Banking Associate, J.P. Morgan Aug 2012 – Aug 2015
  • Advised Fortune 500 retail and technology clients on end-to-end transaction execution.
Academic Foundation

University of Pennsylvania

Master’s Candidate, Computer and Information Technology (Jan 2025 – Present).

New York University, Stern School of Business

B.S. in Finance and International Business (Sep 2008 – Jun 2012).