Real engineering leadership at scale
Managers-of-managers, internationally distributed teams, roadmaps that get shipped instead of talked about. I translate “we need to move faster” into a delivery system that actually can.
About CoreEthos
I run engineering teams the way I wish someone had run mine.
I'm Jes Daigle, founder of CoreEthos. Over 20 years in software — individual contributor to CTO to founder — spent in the environments where mistakes are expensive.
Along the way I've led AI-powered product teams — NLP, OCR, computer vision, OSINT — modernized brittle systems into ones that actually stay up, and taken compliance programs from “we should really do that” to “we passed the audit without wrecking delivery velocity.”
SOC 2. HIPAA. NIST. CMMC. The acronyms matter — but they're not the reason people bring me in.
The outcomes that matter
80%
less deployment time — modernized CI/CD and cloud-native architecture
80%
fewer production bugs — a real QA function built from scratch
30% / 40%
less engineering attrition, more internal promotions — career paths and manager cadence fixed
20%
lower AWS spend — FinOps discipline and rightsizing
Numbers matter. But they're not the reason people bring me in.
What actually makes this different
Fast, or regulated. Very few can do both — fewer still without burning out the team.
That gap is where I work. I've spent my career where mistakes are expensive: safety, health, defense, trust-and-safety, sensitive data at scale. “Move fast and break things” doesn't work there — and neither does the compliance crouch that produces binders instead of software. The middle path — fast, disciplined, trustworthy — is possible. It's just underrepresented.
Compliance that lives in the SDLC
Not auditors and paperwork — controls translated into engineering workflows. NIST and CMMC at Zignal, SOC 2 at MasterStream, HIPAA-compliant AI for CoreEthos clients. Evidence-producing processes, not compliance theater.
AI on both sides of the equation
AI in products — pipelines combining rule-based scoring with LLM classification for real-world risk detection — and AI inside the SDLC: LLM-assisted review, AI-driven test generation, prompt-driven prototyping.
Where it all shows up in one place
Nudge isn't a side project. It's proof of concept.
CoreEthos builds Nudge, a trust-preserving teen safety product. It grew out of years of watching teens get targeted in “innocent” apps while the adults in their lives stayed in the dark — and out of a refusal to accept that the only options were surveillance or silence.
It uses AI to slow a racing teenage mind long enough to spot danger — without reading contacts, photos, or locations. Signals, not surveillance. A calm pause instead of an alarm.
The same worldview shapes how I run engineering teams: patterns over noise, context over reactivity, calm over chaos.
How I lead
Burned-out people don't build resilient systems.
Every team I've led that shipped great work operated calmly under pressure. Every team that struggled was firefighting. The difference wasn't talent or resources — it was whether the leader had built the conditions where clear thinking was possible. I optimize for those conditions.
Small squads with clear missions
Focused teams that know what they own and why it matters.
Manager cadence that catches problems early
Issues surfaced before they become attrition.
Career paths that make growth real
Advancement that's concrete, not theoretical.
Delivery systems that make shipping boring
Boring in the best way — predictable, calm, repeatable.
“Jes shaped small, cross-functional squads, aligned each one to a clear mission, and raised delivery velocity without sacrificing quality or calm. She combines strategic vision, operational discipline, and genuine empathy in a way that is truly exceptional.”
The through-line
Solving real problems for the people on the other end of the software.
Nudge protects teens without teaching them to be watched. CoreEthos applies the same principle across engineering leadership, compliance, and AI adoption — in companies where the stakes are too high for the usual playbook.
Get in touch
Free 30-minute fit check.
No hard sell. No BS. A focused conversation about what's going on with your team, your product, and where CoreEthos can help.
We'll talk through whether CoreEthos is the right partner. If not, you'll still walk away with next steps.