James Severance is a driving force behind Optimal Blue’s technological evolution, spearheading cloud migrations, instilling a DevOps culture, and leading the development of cutting-edge data products. His leadership has transformed engineering operations into a high-performance team, positioning Optimal Blue at the forefront of mortgage technology. With his strategic foresight, Severance plays a major role in laying the groundwork for AI-driven innovation, ensuring Optimal Blue’s continued industry leadership.
Severance has been instrumental in advancing technological innovation within the housing industry. His leadership has spanned multiple high-impact teams, including those responsible for the company’s flagship Product, Pricing, and Eligibility (PPE) engine, Loansifter (broker PPE), data solutions, and marketplace API. Under his direction, Optimal Blue’s engineering division has embraced an Agile, cloud-native approach that is as adaptable as it is robust.
Severance’s leadership in migrating Optimal Blue’s product portfolio to Microsoft Azure has empowered the company to rapidly scale operations in response to market fluctuations. For instance, when market demand for Optimal Blue solutions surged in 2020, this cloud-native agility allowed the company to not only meet demand but to optimize resource allocation as market conditions shifted. Severance led this transition while designing loosely coupled enterprise services and creating standard patterns and practices that now form the foundation of Optimal Blue’s scalable infrastructure.
Severance also led the adoption of an Agile and DevOps-driven operating model, which has transformed engineering operations into a disciplined, high-performing team capable of frequent, zero-downtime releases. This change has made Optimal Blue’s engineering processes more responsive to the product management team’s roadmaps and supports the organization’s customer-centric culture with rapid delivery.
Name:
James Severance
Title:
Senior Director, Software Engineering
Company Name:
Optimal Blue
