Michael Cruz’s career began with a fundamental drive to understand how complex systems work—from deconstructing watches and IBM PCs to building a nuclear fusion reactor as a work-study student at Columbia University. This foundation in Mechanical Engineering instilled a systems-thinking mindset and a rigor for design that has defined his 30-year career in software engineering.
Before joining RFPSchoolwatch, Michael spent three decades at the intersection of finance and technology, serving as a technical lead for several of the world’s premier investment banks, hedge funds, and global financial data providers. He specialized in the architecture and development of mission-critical systems where performance and precision are non-negotiable. His work centered on designing low-latency trading engines, real-time market data frameworks, and exchange connectivity systems that required absolute reliability under extreme throughput.
Throughout his career, Michael has been a specialist in technical modernization. He has successfully orchestrated the re-architecting of monolithic legacy codebases into high-performance, scalable systems. By applying the same rigor to software that is required for physical engineering, he ensures that complex data environments remain fluid, stable, and capable of handling immense scale.
After years of solving time-sensitive problems for the financial sector, Michael founded a technology consultancy to help organizations modernize their infrastructure and monetize hidden data assets. Now, as Chief Technology Officer at RFPSchoolwatch, he brings that same enterprise-grade discipline to the public sector procurement space. Michael oversees the technical vision and architectural roadmap, ensuring the platform delivers the scalability, security, and high-throughput data insights necessary for clients to thrive in a digital-first landscape.
