Cal Evans I am a man of many skills, but few talents.

Cal Evans

Engineering Leader | Leadership Development | AI Enablement

Florida, US · [email protected] LinkedIn · Blog

I build the teams that build what's next.

I lead the people side of engineering. At BambooHR I led the team that took more than 300 engineers through a six-week AI training program, and I designed the leadership curriculum that takes people from individual contributor to Senior Director. Before that, I built and ran development and operations teams as a Director of IT, a COO, and an interim CTO.

Experience

BambooHR

Full-time | United States · Remote

Sr. Technical Program Manager · Aug 2025 – Present

  • Run Learning and Development for a Technology org of about 400 people.
  • Designed the Technology org's leadership curriculum: four programs that take people from individual contributor to Senior Director.
  • Built the new-manager program: making the jump from IC to manager, letting your people do the work, and the crucial conversations, including underperformance. Two cohorts of 10 managers in 2026.
  • Launching a program in December 2026 for 20 individual contributors deciding whether to move into people leadership.
  • Run biweekly workshops on how Engineering is deploying AI. When a new AI program is announced, I bring in subject-matter experts to build a workshop that gets engineers using it.
  • Produce a two-minute internal podcast every Tuesday and Thursday that keeps engineers current, and host a weekly interview show on what the Technology org needs to know from the rest of the company.

Principal Engineer Jun 2023 – Aug 2025

  • Led the team and the project that kickstarted Engineering's use of AI: a required six-week AI training program, run 8 times, April – August 2025.
  • More than 300 people went through it, and people from other departments asked to join.
  • Led a team of 12 instructors and class managers drawn from across the org. Wrote the first class, outlined the second, and approved all of them.
  • Ran Learning and Development programs for the Engineering department.

E.I.C.C., Inc. · Senior Consultant

Jan 1997 – Present | Remote

Training and professional development for web developers. Consulting clients include ADP, Adobe, BBC, Disney, DevriX, Gun.io, and The Motley Fool.

GlobalCastMD · Interim CTO

May 2022 – Oct 2022 | Remote

Organized the development team's efforts, applied best practices, and streamlined the development process for visibility into what's upcoming, in progress, and complete.

Hands-on engineering · 2018 – 2023

  • GymDesk, Senior PHP Developer (Nov 2022 – May 2023): maintained and extended the PHP codebase and built new features.
  • The Motley Fool, Senior Software Developer (Dec 2019 – Dec 2021): rebuilt the development workflow on Git, GitHub, Lando, and Docker.
  • Nexcess, Senior Software Developer (Jan 2018 – Mar 2019): rewrote application search on Elasticsearch and led an in-place replacement of the back-end API.

PADI Staff Instructor (retired) · Freelance

Jan 2021 – Jun 2023 | West Palm Beach, FL

Trained students to dive safely, and was the one responsible for getting a student in trouble safely to the surface.

Zend Technologies · Technical Manager, Training & Certification

Apr 2015 – Oct 2017 | Remote

Managed the PHP Training and Zend Certified Engineer Certification department. My team maintained and developed the courses, taught all the online courses for Rogue Wave, and kept the Zend PHP Certification current.

Developer relations · 2006 – 2015

  • Pantheon, Developer Advocate (2014 – 2015): liaison to the PHP, Drupal, and WordPress communities; documentation and conference talks.
  • Kony Solutions, Developer Community Relations Director (2012 – 2013): organized the first Kony Developer's Conference; wrote the foundational tutorials and documentation.
  • Blue Parabola, LLC, Chief Marketing Officer (2009 – 2012): helped run php[architect], php[tek], and php[world]; created and delivered PHP training worldwide.
  • Ibuildings, Director of the PHP Center for Excellence (2008 – 2009): helped development teams company-wide build better practices for estimating and delivering projects; organized and ran the Dutch PHP Conference 2009.
  • Zend Technologies, Editor-in-Chief, DevZone (2006 – 2008): program chair for ZendCon; hosted the weekly PHP Abstract podcast.

Earlier leadership · 2000 – 2006

  • Jupiter Hosting, Inc., Director of Information Technology (2005 – 2006): built and managed the development team and managed the 24x7 operations team.
  • Simpli Hosting, Inc., COO (2005): responsible for all technical operations, including a 24x7 support team and a datacenter cage of 200+ servers.
  • InPHact, Director of Information Technology (2000 – 2001): hired to build the development team; led an organization of about 50 people.

Writing on AI and Leadership

I write about how teams adopt AI and how leaders make it stick. Selected posts:

Speaking & Thought Leadership

80+ conference talks · 9 keynotes · 2009 – 2022 Major PHP conferences worldwide, including ZendCon, Dutch PHP Conference, SunshinePHP, php[world], Northeast PHP, and Lone Star PHP.

Selected keynotes: Leadership As a Joke · Building a Culture of Respect · Uncle Cal's Career Advice for Developers · Groupies, Roadies, Rockstars · Going Pro · Which Way is the ElePHPant Pointed

Host, Voices of the ElePHPant: 374 episodes over 11 years, the longest-running podcast in the PHP community.

Publications

Wisdom of the ElePHPant · Voices of the ElePHPant · Going Pro · Uncle Cal's Career Advice to Developers · Signaling PHP

Skills

Engineering Leadership · Leadership Development & Curriculum Design · AI Enablement & Adoption · Technical Training · Program Management · Developer Relations · Community Building

Education

University of South Alabama, Computer Science coursework