Jon
Bukiewicz

Manager of Software Engineering / "Buck-a-witz"

I lead an engineering team at Northwestern Mutual, where we're building the tools financial advisors use to do their jobs.

My background is frontend development, but the job these days is mostly about people - figuring out what's in the way, helping someone get unstuck, making sure the team has what it needs to do good work. Northwestern Mutual, like so many others, is rebuilding the way that it operates around AI. I'm trying to build and support a team that's genuinely good at that.

Outside of work: I'm into finding new music on bandcamp, good indie films, making coffee, working out, and spending time with my family.

Work

Northwestern Mutual Sep 2025 - Present

Manager of Software Engineering

Tech Lead for a scrum team within the Planning Solutions org. Driving cross-functional collaboration across UX, PM, Engineering, and Design. Championing AI tooling adoption - including MCP integrations and prompt engineering practices - while mentoring engineers and working to delegate effectively at scale.

ReactTypeScriptGraphQLApolloKotlinAWSPlaywright
Syndio Jun 2024 - Sep 2025

Engineering Manager

Led the team behind Syndio's flagship pay equity products, which accounted for nearly 90% of company revenue. Drove reliability, scale, and async workflow improvements. Championed AI-assisted tooling and incident response processes.

ReactTypeScriptPythonAWSTeam Leadership
Syndio Mar 2022 - Jun 2024

Principal Software Engineer

Principal engineer on core product lines. Led frontend architecture decisions, mentored engineers, and built out testing and automation practices across the org.

ReactTypeScriptGraphQLTestingFrontend Architecture
PayPal Sep 2021 - Mar 2022

Staff Software Engineer

Staff engineer on consumer-facing payment experiences. Contributed to large-scale frontend systems serving millions of users.

ReactNode.jsPerformanceScale
Neighborhoods.com Dec 2018 - Sep 2021

Engineering Team Lead

Led a frontend engineering team building real estate search and neighborhood discovery products. Balanced hands-on engineering with people leadership.

ReactTypeScriptTeam LeadGraphQL
Earlier roles 2010 - 2018

Gorilla Group / DevNext / The Salvation Army

Progressed from web developer to lead frontend engineer across agency, product, and nonprofit contexts. Built a foundation in clean code, client collaboration, and frontend craft.

JavaScriptHTML/CSSFrontend

Skills

Frontend

  • React
  • TypeScript
  • Astro
  • Remix
  • HTML / CSS
  • GraphQL / Apollo
  • Playwright

Backend & Infra

  • Kotlin
  • Node.js
  • AWS
  • REST APIs
  • PostgreSQL
  • Docker

AI & Tooling

  • MCP Integrations
  • LLM Prompt Engineering
  • GitHub Copilot
  • Agentic Workflows
  • xAPI

Leadership

  • Team Building
  • Technical Direction
  • Cross-functional Collaboration
  • Mentorship
  • Async Workflows
  • Incident Response