Torc

Responsible for building community within a $30 billion publicly traded staffing company (Randstad).

VP of Global Community

Gun.io

Community Lead

Responsible for creating meaningful content for the software engineering industry to help job seekers find a job faster and engineering leaders scale and hire more efficiently. Focused on building community through technology conferences and events. Connecting engineering talent to open positions on Gun.io's platform!

Community Manager

The Unicorn Finders

Business Podcast where we are on the quest to illuminate the elusive 'Unicorn Factor' in companies doing unicorn like things! Join us on our educational journey through podcast episodes, interviews, and articles with some of the best of the best using their platform and skills to make the world a better place.

Head of Community

Vaco

In January of 2023 my NERD team merged with our Global Solutions team to double our IT team from 7 to 15 individuals. I am responsible for heading up the entire technology team with an emphasis in relationship/community building among tech professionals across the country. I also am assisting in branding/content for our entire Global Solutions team.

Managing Director, Practice Lead - Vaco Technology Global Solutions

Had the unique opportunity to create a whole new division within Vaco that was focused on finding and placing the top remote engineering talent for our clients across the country. We started with a team of me/zero and grew to seven people.

Managing Director, Lead - Nashville Engineering Remote Division

Directly lead a team of 10 recruiters plus 2 sourcers. Responsible for training across all areas of technology, implementing best practices in recruiting processes, and heavily involved in the hiring of new recruiters. Still 100% hands on in recruiting for all things application development in the Greater Nashville area. Actively involved in speaking across the southeast at technology conferences. Responsible for training on best practices across Vaco nation on CRM best practices.

Managing Director, Recruiting - Vaco Technology Nashville

Directly lead a team of nine recruiters and pioneered our sourcing program at Vaco. Responsible for training across all areas of technology, implementing best practices in recruiting processes, and heavily involved in the hiring of new recruiters. Still 100% hands on in recruiting for all things application development in the Greater Nashville area.

Sr. Director, Recruiting – Vaco Technology Nashville 

Focusing recruiting efforts in the Greater Nashville area. Recruiting specifically in the area of application development with an emphasis around Java, Microsoft, and Open Source technologies. Managing various accounts and working with IT leadership to address organizational needs.

Director, Recruiting - Vaco Technology Nashville

Focused recruiting efforts in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area. Recruited all areas of technology from infrastructure, application development, functional, and IT leadership. Managed various accounts and worked with IT leadership to address organizational needs.

Sr. Associate, Recruiting - Vaco Technology Raleigh

Focused recruiting efforts on Fortune 500 clients across the country. Heavy VMS/MSP management. Specialized recruiting in Information Technology, Accounting/Finance, Telecommunications, and Administrative staffing placements.

National Accounts Recruiting Associate 

With over 13+ years of experience in the talent industry, Taylor has placed more than 1,000 software developers in new roles, helping scale hundreds of engineering teams across the globe. His work spans startups to global enterprises, always grounded in a deep passion for people and meaningful connection.

In 2020, he realized that his true calling was building community—not just placing talent. Since then, he has dedicated himself to creating online spaces where developers can grow, connect, and find support at scale.
Today, he serves as the VP of Global Community at Torc, where he leads the charge in making Torc’s digital ecosystem—especially its vibrant Discord community—a home base for developers navigating their careers and job searches. His mission is to ensure that every software engineer feels like they belong somewhere.

A seasoned international speaker and keynote presenter, Taylor Desseyn frequently shares his insights at major tech conferences around the world, speaking on the future of work, remote talent, and the power of community in tech.

Taylor’s mission is simple yet impactful: to show people they’re not alone in the job search while providing valuable support and insights every step of the way.

If you’re still reading this bio, check out my links below to give you more information about me and what I have going on. I would love to assist you with your next job search so shoot me a dm!

Recent Speaking Engagements: 

2025:
DevUp - St. Louis
Spring I/O - Barcelona 
RenderATL (Emcee) - Atlanta, GA
Amplify Allyship - NYC
Talent Land - Mexico 
StirTrek - Columbus, OH
DevWorld - Amsterdam
Epic Web Conf (Emcee)- Salt Lake City, UT
All Things Open - Raleigh

2024:
Commit Your Code - Dallas, TX
Momentum - Cincinnati
All Things Open - Raleigh, NC
JSConfMX - Mexico 
Thrive Tech - Fort Lauderdale, FL
RenderATL (Emcee) - Atlanta, GA

taylor desseyn

HelloBetter

- Representing Engineering in internal and external ISMS audits for compliance with ISO 13485 as a Registered Medical Device in collaboration with C-level leadership and legal experts
- Leading a team of 6 product engineers (mobile, backend, fullstack, QA) on product initiatives for HelloBetter's headline product: prescription-based mental health therapies via App
- Coordinating a  technical documentation taskforce to ensure accuracy of standards of practice (SOP) documentation and streamlining of outdated docs
- Leading an engineering-wide update to our technical interview rounds (see blog post below)
- Initiating, documenting, and driving architectural changes for improved internationalisation/translation efforts

Software Engineering Manager

- TechLeadConf 2024, Speaker, "How to Turn Engineering Work Into a Promotion", Amsterdam
- Xena Women in Tech Awards 2024, Motivational Speaker, "You Can't Win, So Don't Play", Berlin
- ContainerDays 2023, Speaker, "Balancing Centralisation and Team Autonomy in DevOps Organisation"
- TEDx TUBerlin 2023, Speaker, "Finding and Proving Your Value as a Career Changer"
- CodeNewbies Podcast, Guest Speaker, "From Opera to Code", 28 Dec 2022
- Data Natives 2022, Panellist, "Unconscious Bias in the Workplace and What AI Can Do About It", 31 August 2022 Berlin
- HoneyPot Careers YouTube Series, "How to Go From 0% to Employed Developer"
- WeAreDevs World Congress, Stage Moderator, 14-15 June 2022 Berlin
- Kotlin Dev Day, Moderator, 18-19 May 2022, Amsterdam
- German Testing Day, Speaker, "Being an Opera Singer Prepared Me for a Career in Tech“, 3-4 May 2022 Frankfurt
- Cypress Meetup Berlin, Speaker, "Watch Tests Go Brrrrr: Getting Started with Cypress in ReactJS", 9 March 2022
- CodeDays Conference, Speaker, "How to Support Junior Developers", February 2022
- WeAreDevelopers JavaScript Congress, Speaker: "Watch Tests Go Brrrr: Introduction to Cypress E2E Testing for React", November 2021
- Change Your Tune Podcast, Guest, "From Opera Singer to Software Engineer", August 2021
- TechFair LIVE 2021, Speaker: "How to Find a Tech Job Using LinkedIn", April 2021
- Cocktails and Code Meetup, Speaker: "From Opera to Tech: Learning About Impostor Syndrome, Social Media, and Initiative", April 2021
- OOP Konferenz: Software and Business, Pecha Kucha Speaker: "Being an Opera Singer Prepared Me For a Programming Career", February 2021
- Hashnode Technical Writing Bootcamp, Speaker: "Getting Started in Blogging: Writing Principles and Topic Selection", November 2020

...and more!

Public / Technical Speaker: Software Engineering, Mental Health, and Careers

Axel Springer National Media & Tech GmbH & Co. KG

- Cross-functional leadership involving overview of 33 development teams across 7 sections, most of whom are working on products (websites, apps, video streaming, etc.) with millions of unique users per day.
- Personally co-leading a greenfield innovation project based around Artifical Intelligence / LLMs and personal finance articles for Germany's largest media brands in collaboration with the Axel Springer Academy, pairing 8 junior and senior engineers with a 6-month runtime.
- Co-leadership in the development of the Technical Expert Track (Career Matrix) for over 200 engineers
- Delivered over 20 presentations (both technical and career-based) at conferences, summits, meetups, and bootcamps; covering topics from DevOps centralisation and data-driven algorithmic news, through to coding interviews and personal branding.
- Regularly ran workshops and 1-on-1 coaching for engineers, product owners, and design staff on how to structure and deliver technical presentations.
- Founded multiple DEIB initiatives for technical staff: from interest groups for women+ and immigrant workers, to contract negotiation for Women in Tech Award sponsorship and collaboration in a year-long women+ training programme for junior backend engineers. Unofficially, I act as a "person of trust" for those who have concerns about topics which could impact historically excluded employees.
- As one of eight Directors, my role also includes discussion and oversight of large-scale engineering initiatives, multi-million Euro budgets, and career/personnel hiring/development/promotions/etc.
- I am also a mentor to three engineers, all at different stages of their career.

Director Product and Engineering (Projects and Organisation) 

Novatec Consulting GmbH

- Fullstack development (maintenance and upgrading to newer tech/tools) on a reporting platform in the FinTech industry. 
- Working primarily with Kotlin Spring Boot on the backend and React, TypeScript, Cypress, Jest, and JQuery on the frontend.
- Technical leadership, from budgeting and staffing to Scrum events and client contract updates.

Full Stack Software Engineer

- Squad Lead for a group of six developers
- Took over as Acting Technical Lead in the Novatec 'Talent Hub' for new employees and trainees: guiding the technical decisions, answering questions, and guiding over 30 developers across two projects. 
- Actively worked with Kotlin, Spring Boot, TypeScript, ReactJS, AngularTS, Azure DevOps, AWS, GitLab.
- Training received: iSAQB Software Architecture Foundational Course, Management 3.0, Scrum Master Training, Camunda Introduction

Junior Software Engineer and Interim Technical Lead

DCI Digital Career Institute gGmbH

- Assist teachers with code reviews on exercises and projects
- Mentor and tutor individual students with questions or points of confusion on the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express, React, NodeJS)
- Explain complex programming concepts in simple language

Web Development Tutor

Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden

- Alto I with the Hessen State Theatre Chorus.
- Strong stagecraft skills led me to be selected for multiple small solo roles
- In addition to this work at Hessen State Theatre, I worked for a total of seven years as an opera singer, mostly freelance performing in various concerts and operas across three continents.

Opera Singer

TransatlanticTranslations Group

- The high quality of my freelance translation work led me to be selected for the role of Head Linguist for German to English translations for Transatlantic Translations Group from January 2017. 
- Translation specialisations included online marketing, web copy, newsletters, financial reports, and legal contracts.
- Main client was a market leader in online payments

Head Linguist Online Marketing - DE>EN

Opera Australia

- Developing, coordinating and executing digital marketing and social media strategies for Opera Australia, its associated productions and projects to over 150,000 customers.
- Used HTML and CSS for maintaining the Opera Australia blog via WordPress, as well as website alterations and email newsletters for marketing purposes (e.g. feature videos and image galleries).
- Selected as the Administration Representative for the Opera Australia Occupational Health and Safety Committee 2012 - 2013.

Digital Marketing Specialist

IQPC

- Won Most Profitable Conference Producer 2010, nominated for Employee of the Year 2010.
- Selected for the Fast Track Management Programme.
- Quickly rose to 2IC of the Mining IQ team, mentoring and training new conference producers and leading when the manager was sick or unavailable.
- Also ran staff training sessions on social media usage for business purposes.
- Role included working with cross-functional teams (sponsorship, sales, marketing, finance, research and operations) to achieve budgetary goals and secure the best possible outcome for our delegates, speakers, and sponsors. I saw these projects through from the original concept phase to the close of the final day.

Senior Conference Project Manager

Award-winning engineering leader, TEDx speaker, and author of Amazon bestselling career guide "You Belong in Tech". I started coding at 8 and have since led teams across consulting, health tech, AI innovation, and media; including cross-functional leadership of over 33 engineering teams as Director of Product and Engineering at Europe’s largest news media provider, Axel Springer. As a confident technical speaker and high-energy leader, I bring both the motivation and credibility to drive technical teams forward, while also serving as a confident and trusted representative for organisations in high-stakes external settings, from executive stakeholders and clients to public audiences.

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