Aron Jones

Generalist, with deep experience in Engineering, Product, and Design

defrex.com github.com/defrex linkedin.com/in/aronjones

HighFi

Toronto, Ontario, Canada · Permanent Full-time

Head of Product & Engineering

Sep 2023 - Apr 2025 (1 yr 8 mos) · Hybrid

At HighFi we made software to manage large-scale asset-backed debt facilities. It's a problem that is currently solved using spreadsheets and teams of analysts. They manually run reporting processes that end up being multiple people's full-time work.I lead the product and engineering team at HighFi. We built a product that could analyze a contract (the facility agreement) and use LLMs to extract the key logic into our custom configuration language. We could then connect directly to customer data sources (the "asset tape") and run the resulting financial model to give customers real-time access to the state of their facilities. We could also use this data to automate the reporting workflows and save large amounts of analyst time.HighFi had strong engagement, with our customers buying more from us over time. By the end of my time there we were close to $1B in assets managed on the platform.

Founding Engineer

Mar 2023 - Sep 2023 (7 mos) · On-site

Wealthsimple

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Staff Engineer

Feb 2022 - Feb 2023 (1 yr 1 mo) · Permanent Full-time

At Wealthsimple, I lead the product & engineering team for a newly acquired startup which needed some help with its technology. The market looked promising, but the product was unfortunately not very stable.Over the course of the year I lead the team we stabilized the product and worked with customers to make a variety of workflow and product improvements. This enabled a new wave of growth and engagement.Unfortunately after a year or so WS decided strategically that it made more sense to focus on their core business and exited a number of their experimental projects, including this one. The company was spun back out into an independent startup, and I decided this was a good time to move on.

Treasure Financial

Greater Toronto Area, Canada

Co-Founder

Sep 2019 - Jan 2022 (2 yrs 5 mos)

Treasure was an educational debit card for kids. We were focused on teaching good financial habits from a young age.At Treasure we initially built a money management app, not attached to a card (our issuing partner took ~1.5 yrs to launch). We worked closely with our first few hundred customers to make sure we were meeting the needs of their families. Establishing strong engagement which was boosted even further once we were able to launch the card.

CareGuide

Greater Toronto Area, Canada · 2 yrs 4 mos total

VP Product

Aug 2018 - Dec 2018 (5 mos)

When I took over as VP Product at CareGuide, my purview in the organization expanded from just Nanny Lane to all the sites.Earlier that year, in order to scale, CareGuide had split the product organization into multiple teams. The resulting org structure had lead to overburdened leadership and considerably slower cadence. Thus, my first act as VP Product was to re-organize. I hired and promoted to install Product Managers, who could organize their teams and ensure all the activity was focused on the company's strategic goals. These new teams got new mandates, focused on key metrics rather than specific areas of the codebase.With renewed focus, we were able to pay down a considerable amount of technical debt, which had been burdening the team for years. We also increased the conversion rates and lowered support tickets per active user considerably. This by primarily focusing energy on bug fixing, usability improvements, and algorithmic matching.

Director Of Engineering, Special Projects

May 2017 - Jul 2018 (1 yr 3 mos)

This mysterious title was effectively "internal founder" of Nanny Lane, a nanny job marketplace. I lead a team to devise a strategy for a new line of business with a new approach to monetization.Nanny Lane was built using a Rails-based GraphQL server and React client, including all the fixins like HMR, Code Splitting, Server Rendering, and Query Caching.In the time I worked on Nanny Lane, I transitioned from Lead Engineer to Product Manager. In that time we built a liquid nanny matching market with strong monetization.

Senior Software Engineer

Sep 2016 - May 2017 (9 mos)

As an engineer at CareGuide I shipped a good number of features, including a redesign of the payment flows. In addition to feature development, I lead the charge to convert a hodge-podge of one-off REST endpoints into a consistently implemented GraphQL API. I also lead the effort to bring Linting into the CI process, devising a migration plan and getting the team on-board to increase code quality substantially.

Shopcaster

Greater Toronto Area, Canada · 3 yrs 7 mos total

Co-Founder & CTO

Oct 2011 - Sep 2013 (2 yrs) · Full-time

Shopcaster was a platform for small, physical retailers to sell their products online.It had a suite of features to solve the problems of managing an ecommerce site as a small physical retailer. These include a just-in-time inventory reconciliation system, so the retailer doesn't have to maintain online and offline inventory separately; full-service "just print this label and stick it on the box we gave you" logistics; and easy-to-use native iOS and Android apps for managing a shop.Shopcaster was made with Django on the server. We employed Continuous Deployment, and had a Continuous Integration server chewing away on an extensive test suite after every push. There is a fully-featured REST API supporting a consumer-facing iOS application, as well as Android, iOS, and Backbone-based shop management applications.

Co-Founder, Hipsell

Mar 2011 - Oct 2011 (8 mos)

Imagine Craigslist with improvements. Specifically: location-based, mobile, real-time, and several other such niceties. Hipsell raised a seed round with Mantella Venture Partners.We had a client application, a builder and an API server. The JavaScript application frameworks of the time were a little light, so we rolled our own. Some specific features we included were server-side prerendering, real-time data binding, and comprehensive memory management.

Co-Founder, Connectsy

Mar 2010 - Mar 2011 (1 yr 1 mo)

Connectsy helped users get together with their friends on short notice. At the time, Foursquare and Gowalla were big. My co-founder and I would check in, only to have people comment "Hey! I would have joined you. Let me know next time you're doing that." So we thought, what if you could pre-check-in, to let people know where you intend to go, not just where you are.

Earlier Experience

VerticalScope Inc. - Engineering Lead, RateMDs.com

Apr 2014 - May 2015 (1 yr 2 mos) · Greater Toronto Area, CanadaLead developer on a team to update a newly acquired site: ratemds.com. Completely redesigned and rebuilt the site from the ground up, maintaining or improving all metrics. Researched and implemented a subscription-based native ad platform for doctors.

Wave Accounting - Developer

Apr 2010 - Aug 2010 (5 mos) · Greater Toronto Area, CanadaWave is a Toronto-based startup with several SAAS applications focused on small businesses. Wrote and implemented a redesign of the transaction categorization interface with JS-based bulk operations.

Mazava - Developer

Oct 2008 - Apr 2010 (1 yr 7 mos)Lead a development team to create a Kickstarter-like application for the developing world.

Beat District - Developer

Feb 2009 - Dec 2009 (11 mos)Beat District was a social competition site for beat makers. The site had real-time voting, and a persistent music player that allowed page navigation without loss of playback. Built with XHR-based page navigation, hash-based history management, and custom audio components.