About Me

Get to know me better

Hello! I'm Lawrence Tolentino

I'm the Director of Engineering at Overtime, where I lead teams and set technical direction. Over 15+ years I've grown from writing my first web apps to architecting systems and building the people and processes that ship them.

My path runs from consumer web platforms and agency work, through years of backend and .NET leadership at Cie, to senior full-stack engineering and now engineering leadership at Overtime. Along the way I've stayed hands-on — I care about clean, maintainable code and pragmatic solutions to real problems.

Lately I'm especially excited about AI-native engineering: building with the latest models and agentic coding tools, and weaving AI into everyday development workflows.

Outside of engineering, I spent over a decade as a photographer, capturing weddings, portraits, and events in a photojournalistic style — an eye for detail I still bring to everything I build.

Experience

Director of Engineering

Apr 2026 - Present

Overtime

Leading engineering strategy and execution — setting technical direction, growing engineering teams, and shipping scalable full-stack products.

Engineering Manager

May 2025 - Apr 2026

Overtime

Managed and mentored a full-stack engineering team, owning delivery, growth paths, and day-to-day execution across the product.

Senior Full-Stack Engineer

Mar 2022 - May 2025

Overtime

Built and shipped features across the stack with modern web technologies and AWS, laying the groundwork for a move into engineering leadership.

Lead Backend Developer

Jan 2017 - Mar 2022

Cie

Led the backend department — mentoring developers, running reviews and 1:1s, defining standards for CI/CD, databases, and server-side development, and driving hiring and technical planning for client projects.

Senior .NET Developer

Sep 2015 - Jan 2017

Cie

Built data-driven applications on the .NET platform, shaped back-end architecture, researched new tooling, and mentored junior developers.

Web Developer

Mar 2008 - Feb 2015

Web Advanced

Delivered custom web solutions for a wide range of clients, building front-end and back-end features across many projects.

Owner / Photographer

Jul 2007 - Dec 2019

Lo's Photography

Ran a photography business specializing in a photojournalistic style — weddings, portraits, studio, and events — with a knack for capturing emotion as it happens.

Web Developer

Jan 2007 - Mar 2008

VPC Interactive

Built and maintained websites and web applications for agency clients.

Web Developer

May 2006 - Jan 2007

Campusbug.com

Started my software career building features for a consumer web platform.