Matthew Duren

VP of Engineering, AI & Data, KnowBe4

I'm an engineering and AI executive who builds agentic AI products at production scale — and the high-velocity global teams to ship them.

Over eight years at KnowBe4, I scaled the engineering organization through an IPO and a $4.6B take-private. Today I lead 150+ engineers across six countries. My teams shipped the first fully autonomous multi-agent AI product in the human risk management space. As CTO of MaxU, I built an AI-native youth mental-performance platform from the ground up on AWS serverless. I also advise early-stage founders through Embarc Collective.

I'm focused on helping growth-stage companies operationalize AI across their product and engineering orgs — turning proof-of-concept excitement into durable, shipping teams.

Experience

VP of Engineering, AI & Data

Aug 2018 — Present

KnowBe4, Inc. · Tampa, FL · IPO 2021 · $4.6B Vista Equity Take-Private 2023

Scaled technology platform through multiple phases of hypergrowth, serving 70,000+ organizations worldwide across a multi-cloud AWS/Azure infrastructure
Led strategy and delivery of AIDA, KnowBe4's autonomous AI product line — the first fully autonomous multi-agent system in human risk management. Drove adoption to 20%+ of the customer base; engineered AI cost at under 3% of cloud spend
Transformed engineering into AI-native development at scale: 95%+ AI-assisted coding adoption across ~400 engineers globally, delivering 2x+ measured productivity and compressing project delivery from months to weeks
Identified and built a greenfield AI agent security product — from research to functional product in three months, taking KnowBe4 into an adjacent market
Architected AI governance framework positioning KnowBe4 for ISO 42001 certification — among the first in cybersecurity. Accountable for FedRAMP Moderate, ISO 27001, and SOC 2
Led technical due diligence for the $4.6B Vista Equity take-private and KnowBe4's acquisition of Egress (cloud email security). Relocated to the UK to lead platform integration and architectural alignment

Chief Technology Officer

Sep 2022 — Present

MaxU · Tampa, FL · Startup

Sole technical leader for a youth mental-performance platform — built the entire product from zero on AWS with a distributed team across the US and India. Fully serverless architecture with AI at the core
Designed and built an AI coaching agent using Claude via AWS Bedrock, with safety guardrails purpose-built for youth audiences ages 8–18
Scaled platform to international distribution through strategic partnerships including Babe Ruth League (1M+ athletes), Players Health, RISE Flag Football, and UA Junior Golf Tour

Earlier Career

2014 — 2018

Principal Engineer (AWS), Mobiquity — Lead AWS engineer on PCI- and HIPAA-compliant enterprise engagements for clients including Novartis and AWS. Owned infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, and technical hiring.

Sr. DevOps Engineer, ConnectWise — Pioneered Docker in production and established the company's first DevOps team. Led the migration from one-server-per-customer to multi-tenant SaaS on AWS.