Ernest Chen
Open to executive roles and fractional engagements

Technology leadership that ships.

Enterprise architecture · Cloud & data platforms · AI-forward engineering leadership

I lead architecture, engineering, and data organizations that modernize how media and advertising businesses build software. Over 20+ years — from Executive Director of Architecture at Comcast Advertising to VP of Global Infrastructure at FreeWheel — I've turned sprawling application portfolios into cloud-native, event-driven platforms and built the governance and teams to sustain them. Today, through Gentoo Solutions, I help companies do the same: pragmatic architecture, AI/ML enablement, and engineering organizations that deliver.

20+
Years leading technology
300+
Apps in modernized portfolio
12M
Households reached by ad tech
30%
Faster incident response

Career highlights

Three chapters that show the pattern: take a complex platform problem, set the architecture, build the team, deliver measurable results.

Enterprise modernization at scale

Set the modernization vision for 300+ applications at Comcast Advertising, architecting the prospect-to-pay media supply chain with AI-driven enrichment — and led the Salesforce CRM transformation serving 2,700+ enterprise users.

Comcast Advertising · Executive Director, Architecture

Ad tech reaching 12M households

Led development of addressable advertising on FreeWheel's MRM platform with real-time Kafka streaming, and delivered multi-cloud data platforms with event-driven, micro-frontend SaaS architecture across multiple teams.

FreeWheel · Comcast · Executive Director, Engineering

Global infrastructure and reliability

Architected FreeWheel's global SaaS platform across AWS and six data centers, and deployed unified observability over 100 GB of daily events — cutting incident response time by 30%.

FreeWheel · VP, Global Infrastructure Architect

How I can help

Available for full-time executive roles and fractional or advisory engagements.

Fractional CTO / chief architect

Executive-level technology strategy, roadmaps, and organizational design without the full-time commitment.

Cloud and data platform strategy

Multi-cloud architecture, event-driven integration, Kafka streaming, and data platforms built for analytics.

AI/ML enablement

Practical AI adoption for engineering teams — from AI-assisted development workflows to AI-driven product features.

Architecture governance and modernization

Architecture review boards, cloud centers of excellence, DevSecOps standards, and portfolio modernization.

Let's talk

Hiring for a technology leadership role, or need senior architecture help part-time? Send a note and I'll reply within one business day.

New York