The Team at First Factory

Demonstrating passion and dedication every day

Jason T. Roff
Founder & CEO

Early in his career, Jason worked as a software developer and development manager. Having authored six books sharing his experience and insight in the field, he was inspired to open First Factory in 2000. Among the initial entrepreneurs to believe in the success of building software development teams in Latin America, Jason chose Costa Rica for its proximity to the U.S., advanced education, economic stability, and beauty. This nearshore development model, now commonplace, has proven successful for over two decades.

Meet Jason keyboard_double_arrow_right

Don Gregori
COO

Don is an innovative problem solver and effective leader with over 25 years of experience driving growth, cultivating talent, and shaping client experiences. Well versed in navigating the customer journey and the intricacies of software development projects, Don has assisted clients in tailoring their product vision, showcasing their distinct selling points and maximizing efficiency by using data to inform task prioritization. At First Factory, Don oversees business operations, human resources and design.

Before joining the team, Don was a First Factory client for eight years. He was instantly impressed by the software engineers he worked with, being highly adept at learning new technologies (Scala, for example) and collaborating seamlessly to support all stakeholders, including long pairing sessions with design and marketing teams. It quickly became evident that the unique First Factory culture offered a clear competitive advantage that could not be easily replicated.

Becca Troung
VP, Client Experience

Becca Troung, VP of Client Experience. Standing and facing forward, focus on delivering quality products to our clients

Becca Troung
VP, Client Experience

After years of experience and career promotions in product management and business analysis from Kaplan Test Prep, Becca came to First Factory highly equipped to lead our teams to deliver quality products. She has a thorough background in leading full stack Agile Scrum teams, creating and maintaining product roadmaps and KPI management to ensure goals are met. At First Factory, Becca leads a growing team of managers to execute deliverables at the highest level of excellence and with empathy for the needs of our employees and clients.

Juan “JD” Sanchez
VP, Engineering

JD is a mission-driven professional with over a decade of experience developing, managing and growing teams and applications. He has mentored countless software engineers in their career development paths with solid leadership and communication skills. He has excelled at creating a customized approach to exceeding each client’s expectations of quality work performed. His specializations are in Javascript and .NET, combining those with experience in many services in AWS, particularly in the DevOps area. JD has a positive attitude, a stellar work ethic and he is always available and eager to provide feedback to others and share his insights.

Andrea Pacheco
Client Experience Manager

Andrea has over 15 years of international experience in customer experience, customer relations, localization & outsourcing, country expansion and program management. She is excited about program management and customer satisfaction, but her main passions lie in people and culture, adult learning, talent development, mentoring and personal development. She enjoys helping others and ensuring that her team has all the tools necessary to succeed.

Carolina Barahona
Talent Acquisition Manager

With over 7 years of experience in recruitment and talent acquisition, Carolina has developed a strong passion for connecting talented individuals with their dream careers.

Carolina possesses a comprehensive understanding of the soft skills necessary for success in the industry, allowing her to effectively assess a candidate’s cultural fit for the organization. She is adept at identifying top talent, cultivating relationships with candidates, and ensuring a seamless hiring process.

Christoph Waldburger
Client Experience Manager

Fluent in five languages, Christoph has over 10 years of experience internationally in project management, sales, and leadership roles. He joined First Factory as a Client Experience Manager responsible for managing client relations for teams of developers. In this role, Christoph is a liaison between First Factory and our clients, maintaining frequent communication to ensure all staffing requirements are fulfilled appropriately and all expectations are being met for both quality and volume of work.

Some of his additional management duties include participating in onboarding team members to a new client or project, addressing individual performance issues, and coordinating day-to-day operational issues such as time off, logging of work hours, etc.

Melvin Durán
Business Operations Manager

Melvin has over 10 years of experience working in accounting and business management. He’s passionate about bridging the gap between Costa Rican regulation and business management. He’s worked with national and international clients to help them comply with Costa Rican laws and regulations. He understands the value of combining accounting and compliance tasks with good communication and people skills to promote a better comprehension of a business. Melvin is an avid music enthusiast who collects records and plays several instruments.

Natalia Rugama
Design Manager

With over 9 years of experience in diverse design areas, from art direction to accessibility, Natalia’s curious mindset is undoubtedly an essential asset for our success. Her extensive experience with multidisciplinary teams, workflow coordination, and support has brought her to seek a specialization in UX Management while learning more about Agile methodologies. Natalia is familiar with handling multiple projects simultaneously, setting priorities, and working directly with clients and stakeholders. Natalia feels it’s essential to take some time to empathize with clients’ needs, understand each project’s characteristics, and—most importantly—determine how to account for users and their needs.

Pablo Alvarado
Senior Client Experience Manager

Pablo is an experienced senior business and project manager, who has successfully helped some of our largest clients meet business goals and scale their teams across departments. Pablo is highly adept at gauging the effectiveness of each team member’s work and providing constructive feedback to help team members grow in their careers. He is incredibly skilled at juggling many priorities, prioritizing effectively and never allowing tasks to go unattended.

Tatiana Durán
People Operations Manager

Passionate about human and organizational behavior, Tatiana started as an IT Recruiter and took every opportunity to move to a more people-centric role. Tatiana has honed a blend of skills in employee engagement, internal processes, and organizational development. Leveraging her experience and curiosity, Tatiana strives to drive initiatives that enhance the First Factory’s organizational culture. She is deeply committed to creating an environment where employees feel valued, motivated, and empowered to achieve their best work. She is convinced that a strong, positive workplace culture is the cornerstone of any successful organization. Outside of work, Tatiana is a Sommelier, a bookworm, and loves to learn new languages.

Ana Corrales
QA Manager

A highly skilled Senior Quality Assurance Engineer with 10+ years of experience, Ana has a strong technical background, including four years experience as a software developer. She has strong management skills, refined over five years of experience in Quality Assurance leadership roles and managing cross-functional teams and multidisciplinary projects. Ana is able to see the "big picture" while staying on top of all details, pointing out errors and possible risks, and making suggestions while implementing continuous improvement. She is a dedicated, analytical and organized professional that enjoys coaching, mentorship and training QA staff.

Carlos Mora
Engineering Manager

Carlos is a dedicated software engineering professional with over a decade of experience working in the .NET stack who is a tremendous client advocate and communicator. He has collaborated on many projects ranging from desktop to web, and is hands on from gathering requirements, turning them into user stories and technical requirements, and then delivering a final product. Aside from working with the .Net stack, he also has experience with emerging technologies, getting involved in IoT projects, using Arduino, RaspberryPi and Amazon Alexa, to name a few.

Christian Navarro
Engineering Manager

One of the originals, Christian has been a dedicated First Factory team member since 2011. Beginning as a Junior BackEnd .NET developer, he has consistently broadened his skill-set and knowledge base, working his way up to a FullStack Senior Engineer, then promoted to Technical Lead in 2020, and two years later, he joined the team of Engineering Managers. When he started at First Factory as one of only ten developers, Christian remembers the bonds of friendship and trust he formed with his colleagues. Now, he works as hard to foster a similar close-knit comradery within the teams he manages. As a teacher in First Factory's Academy program, Christian has discovered a passion for educating others and the importance of cultivating critical thinking and communication skills. He finds satisfaction in witnessing, first-hand, the incremental progress and growth of each student.

Gabriel Ulloa
Engineering Manager

Gabriel has over 10 years of experience building state of the art web applications in technologies like Angular, JavaScript, .Net and Java, Gabriel was a welcomed addition to the First Factory leadership team. He has been heavily involved in the leadership and management of full stack development teams, coaching every member to achieve their potential best. As a leader, Gabriel firmly believes empathy and great communication across every team member is key to achieve a highly effective team. He is always available for any team member that may require his help regardless of the day or time.

Johnn Castro
Senior Engineering Manager

Johnn is a talented software engineer and leader who loves building high-quality software and learning from other developers and peers. His extensive experience in implementing scalable solutions has helped his teams understand the importance of this practice and has created better efficiency in their work. He is highly proficient in web and mobile development technologies such as React.js, Angular, Node.js, React Native, Ionic and Cordova. Johnn is AWS certified and brings several years of experience working with different cloud computing technologies such as GCP, Azure and Digital Ocean to the team.

Marcela Conejo
Engineering Manager

With over a decade of experience in the tech industry, Marcela has honed her skill set and expertise in diverse roles. She worked on multiple projects and teams for seven years, diving deep into various technologies and systems.

In the past three years, she has transitioned into leadership roles, managing dedicated teams and being responsible for designing, developing, and deploying web systems for clients and internal projects—even partaking in the leadership of an acquisition segment unit for a client.

Marcela’s tech preferences lean heavily towards JavaScript, React, NodeJS, Ruby, and GraphQL. She is fully committed to quality and client satisfaction, creating and nurturing long-lasting, positive relationships with her teams and clients.

Outside of work, Marcela is an avid gamer and proud pet owner who finds solace in gardening.

Pablo Rodríguez
Engineering Manager

Pablo has over seven years of experience in technical and leadership roles. He has worked on numerous engineering projects, both as a senior software engineer and development leader. His mentorship style is to encourage the experience of building up, maintaining and improving technical solutions for real-life problems by coding. His experience has allowed him to help lead his teams to achieve their full potential in the software development career field. Pablo is a firm believer that the success of a project is a direct result of clear and transparent communication between the involved parties.

Rocmer Hurtado
Engineering Manager

Rocmer, “Roc,” is an experienced software engineer who has over a dozen years of experience successfully creating innovative and tailored Java monolithic and microservices-based architecture solutions with a consultant history of expertise in the financial industries. Another part of his impressive background was transferring to another country to lead a team of backend developers for API and Services in order to reach a challenging deadline for a client. He proactively and rapidly utilizes emerging technologies as he leads teams of software developers to adapt to client needs and changes. Rocmer enjoys delivering long-term and scalable solutions as well as teaching and providing guidance to other software engineering professionals.

All
Technology
People Ops
Operations
Project Management
Branding & Design
Client Experience

Ernesto

Software Engineer

Randall

Project Manager

Byron

Product Owner

Greg

Business Development Representative

Humberto

Business Analyst

Jorge

Junior Software Developer

Verny

Product Owner

Stefan

Senior Software Engineer

Steven

Senior Software Engineer

Mariana

Junior Software Developer

Lindey

Software Developer

Víctor

Senior Software Engineer

Jesús

Junior QA Engineer

Gerick

Junior Software Developer

Carolina

IT Recruiter

Fer

Full Stack Designer

Mónica

QA Engineer

Erick

Senior Software Engineer

Pedro

Senior Software Engineer

Laura

Product Owner

Alex

Product Manager

Priscilla

QA Engineer

Jose

Product Owner

Víctor

Product Manager

Kenneth

Product Manager

Jean

QA Engineer

Diego

Product Manager

Esteban

Product Manager

Fabi

Junior Software Developer

Interested in working
with First Factory?

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The Team at First Factory

Demonstrating passion and dedication every day

Jason T. Roff Founder & CEO

Jason T. Roff Founder & CEO

Don Gregori COO

Don Gregori COO

Becca Troung VP, Client Experience

Becca Troung VP, Client Experience

Juan “JD” Sanchez VP, Engineering

Juan “JD” Sanchez VP, Engineering

Managers

Andrea PachecoClient Experience Manager

Carolina BarahonaTalent Acquisition Manager

Christoph WaldburgerClient Experience Manager

Melvin DuránBusiness Operations Manager

Natalia RugamaDesign Manager

Pablo AlvaradoSenior Client Experience Manager

Tatiana DuránPeople Operations Manager

Engineering Managers

Ana CorralesQA Manager

Carlos MoraEngineering Manager

Christian NavarroEngineering Manager

Gabriel UlloaEngineering Manager

Johnn CastroSenior Engineering Manager

Marcela ConejoEngineering Manager

Pablo RodríguezEngineering Manager

Rocmer HurtadoEngineering Manager

Freddy

Christian

Juan

Marce

Erick

Tiqui

Ariel

Guillermo

Yasmin

Gabriel

Christofer

Steven

Tatiana

José

Ale

Greivin

Fauricio

Jorge

Mary

Daniel

Johnn

Fabian

Wolfie

Carlos

Juan

Joaquín

Carolina

Aura

Patrick

Luis

Chiara

William

Pablo

Luis

Aaron

Diego

Jafeth

David

Adrián

Diego

Sergio

Keylor

Alvaro

Carlos

Sean

Alberto

Luis

Juan

Marco

Jorge

Alvaro

Pablo

Marcela

Jason T. Roff
Founder & CEO

Jason T. Roff
Founder & CEO

Don Gregori
COO

Don Gregori
COO

Becca Troung
VP, Client Experience

Becca Troung
VP, Client Experience

Juan “JD” Sanchez
VP, Engineering

Juan “JD” Sanchez
VP, Engineering

Andrea Pacheco
Client Experience Manager

Carolina Barahona
Talent Acquisition Manager

Christoph Waldburger
Client Experience Manager

Melvin Durán
Business Operations Manager

Natalia Rugama
Design Manager

Pablo Alvarado
Senior Client Experience Manager

Tatiana Durán
People Operations Manager

Ana Corrales
QA Manager

Carlos Mora
Engineering Manager

Christian Navarro
Engineering Manager

Gabriel Ulloa
Engineering Manager

Johnn Castro
Senior Engineering Manager

Marcela Conejo
Engineering Manager

Pablo Rodríguez
Engineering Manager

Rocmer Hurtado
Engineering Manager