Resume

Cory Donnelly
Buffalo, New York
(716) 512-8795
cory.donnelly@gmail.com | https://linkedin.com/in/corydonnelly

Summary of Qualifications

Transformational Technology Executive with a proven record of building high-performing engineering organizations, modernizing enterprise platforms, and delivering at scale for millions of customers. Expert in leading large cross-functional teams and multimillion-dollar budgets to drive innovation, resiliency, and cloud-native transformation. Recognized for SDLC excellence, developer enablement, quality engineering, API governance and strategy, digital conversions, cloud migration strategy, and open source strategy. Demonstrates a strong commitment to cultivating engineering culture, advancing STEM education, and driving community impact as a founder of Capital One Coders (29k+ students, 150+ school/nonprofit partners, 130k+ volunteer hours).

Professional Experience

M&T Bank July 2019 — October 2025

Senior Vice President, Engineering Director of Engineering Excellence (December 2024 — October 2025)
Built and led the bank’s Engineering Excellence organization, driving transformation across the system & Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), developer experience, developer enablement, quality engineering, API governance and strategy, and Open Source strategy. Established enterprise policies and standards, modernized software development practices, improved reliability, and accelerated delivery for ~4 million customers while ensuring audit and regulatory compliance. Led retail and business banking cloud migration strategy (500+ apps).

Designed and implemented a “Path to Production” framework that formalized and streamlined the SDLC from ideation through deployment, making the compliant route the fastest and most efficient.
Improved developer experience, productivity, and consistency by integrating and standardizing GitLab, Jira, and Artifactory tooling, and introducing DORA/SPACE metrics and AI development assistance.
Elevated software quality and reliability by establishing an enterprise-wide Quality Engineering function, advancing test automation, performance testing, and secure test data management practices.
Instituted API governance and strategy, API marketplace, catalog, and development best practices.
Strengthened risk management and controls by addressing SDLC and customer data handling gaps.

Senior Vice President, Engineering Director of Digital Technology (May 2021 — December 2024)
Owned and led Mobile and Online Banking platforms, supporting ~4 million customers and driving digital adoption with more than 75% active users within 90 days. Directed a 120-person engineering team and a mid-eight-figure annual budget, while also leading large-scale, cross-functional initiatives to modernize core digital capabilities, strengthen resiliency, and prepare the technology stack for cloud migration.

Oversaw Digital Tech’s first-ever digital conversion during the People’s United Bank acquisition, migrating tens of millions of customer records (user credentials, transaction histories, bill payments, payees, etc.)
Guided Digital Tech teams through a significant maturation journey, achieving a 157% throughput increase and 98% improvement in predictability in 2024.
Co-built and led a cross-functional modernization-focused Solution Train of 15 ARTs, 300+ engineers and stakeholders, executing a multi-year modernization push of retail and business banking tech stacks; drove operating rigor (OKRs, operating routines, governance) that increased Solution-wide throughput by 30%, with feature completion rising Q1 28% → Q2 45% → Q3 72% → Q4 87% in 2024.
Resolved high-severity enterprise cryptographic controls findings by aligning Tech Risk, Audit, Compliance, and senior business and tech leadership with zero disruption to delivery.* Launched an end-to-end testing framework adopted Solution-wide for consistency and auditability.
Led efforts to upgrade critical customer-facing infrastructure, removing critical-path obsolescence risk and de-risking larger modernization initiatives.
Drove tech modernization and resiliency improvements, enabling cloud readiness and ensuring scalability of digital platforms for future growth.

Vice President, Director of Engineering (July 2019 — May 2021)
Built and led a distributed, high-performing engineering organization for M&T Bank’s first cloud-native incubated start-up, Nota. Scaled the team and operating model to take the customer-facing application from initial prototype to production, unlocking a new customer segment and revenue stream.

Capital One April 2011 — July 2019

Senior Manager (January 2018 — July 2019)
Led multiple teams at Capital One focused on innovation and modernization of cloud-based customer-facing platforms for consumer and small business credit card accounts. Oversaw product development, operational service delivery, and platform management of several critical systems using Agile methodologies, while driving enterprise adoption of cloud-native technologies to improve scalability, efficiency, and customer experience.

Coordinated a large-scale, cross-organizational effort to convert millions of tokenized customer tax IDs across 35 platforms, mitigating AWS Hardware Security Module (HSM) end-of-life risks and ensuring seamless continuity for our customers.
Cut Customer Identity Verification infrastructure spend by 98% by implementing an on-demand, serverless architecture.

Master Software Engineer, Manager (August 2014 — January 2018)
Led multiple teams to transform software engineering practices and modernize legacy infrastructure in support of the credit card business. Ran business critical customer-facing platforms for risk modeling and scoring, loan decisioning, and line assignment, ensuring reliable delivery against business objectives. Also co-founded and scaled a flagship community outreach initiative to expand access to STEM education.

Co-founded and scaled Capital One Coders, an engineer-led, 10-week middle-school program, reaching 29,000+ students across 13 communities with 150+ school/nonprofit partners and 130,000+ volunteer hours; co-designed MIT App Inventor curriculum and operating model; 90% of programming serves low-to-moderate-income communities.

Senior Software Engineer, Principal Associate (April 2011 — August 2014)
Provided technical leadership for Capital One’s flagship credit card application capture platform ICORE, guiding a rapid-cycle development team of onshore and offshore developers, business analysts, and testers. Ensured delivery of high-quality solutions that optimized the customer application experience while improving speed to market, efficiency, and reliability.

Education/Certifications

University of Toronto
Honours Bachelor of Science, Computer Science and Physics

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate, Amazon Web Services
Microsoft Azure Fundamentals AZ-900, Microsoft Azure
ICAgile Certified Professional in Agile Team Facilitation (ICP-ATF), ICAgile

Awards and Community Support

2020 Buffalo Emerging Technology Awards Showcase, Judge
2017 CodeRVA High School Advisory Council, Business Advisory Member
2016 Richtech Gala People’s Choice Award, Capital One Coders, Richmond Technology Council
Python Software Foundation, Contributing Member