About
Authored by J. Patrick Fulton, focusing on software engineering, cloud architecture, and technical leadership topics.
I write as a career software engineer and technology leader who has spent more than two decades building and scaling SaaS products—most recently as a Chief Technology Officer in healthcare. I’ve led engineering, QA, and DevOps organizations through high-growth phases, guided architectural overhauls into cloud-native platforms, and worked the intersection of product strategy, technical design, and real-world delivery.
A large portion of my work has been in healthcare technology: patient engagement platforms, revenue cycle tools, and contract management systems. That has included migrating legacy applications into elastic cloud architectures, shaping engineering organizations as they grow 10x, and supporting investor due diligence on both the technology and the teams behind it. I’ve also spent years in roles like architect, managing architect, and engineering manager—designing frameworks and patterns for other teams, running internship programs, and coaching engineers at every level.
This blog is where I unpack the practical side of that experience: how we design systems that scale without turning into unmaintainable tangles, how we run engineering organizations that are both efficient and humane, and how modern tooling (cloud, AI-assisted development, data platforms, and IaC) actually fits into day-to-day work instead of just slide decks. Posts are written from the perspective of someone who still enjoys reading code, cares about the details of build pipelines and architecture diagrams, and regularly has to explain those same details to executives and boards.
If you’re a software engineer, architect, or engineering leader who wants concrete patterns, trade-off discussions, and real-world scars rather than abstract platitudes, you are the target of this content. I am sharing the patterns, failures, and lessons that have proven durable across products, teams, and technology stacks.
Contact
Email: contact+blog@fultonengineeringservices.com