AJ Cassarella

Customer Success & Solutions Engineering — Robotics & Warehouse Automation

Denver, Colorado  ·  linkedin.com/in/anthonyjcassarella  ·  thevoyajer.com

Summary

Customer-facing engineering leader with 12+ years in industrial automation, delivering autonomous mobile robotics into hard environments — brownfield retrofits, 24/7 facilities, and dispersed fleets. I have worked both sides of the table: I've evaluated, justified and bought material handling automation, and I've sold, designed, deployed and supported it. I build the commercial and deployment functions that make automation repeatable and profitable — standardized site processes, cost-to-deploy reduction, and ROI models that survive customer scrutiny.

Domain & Impact Areas

Warehouse & Logistics Automation Autonomous Mobile Robotics Robotics System Design & Deployment Economics Customer Success, Expansion & Account Management Industrial Deployment & Field Service

Work Experience

Cyngn

May 2024 — Present · Remote

Sr. Manager, Customer Success & Solutions Engineering

  • Lead the three pillars of customer-facing engineering: Solutions Engineering, Deployment Engineering, and Customer Success.
  • Reduced cost-to-deploy 40% in six months by designing a standardized deployment process that cut on-site labor hours across all customer installations, and continues to improve them through focused enhancements.
  • Scaled deployed fleet 150% against 100% customer growth in seven months as team manager. Owned site survey through customer acceptance.
  • Built the customer success function from scratch: recurring executive check-ins and customer-specific metric dashboards tied to operational KPIs.
  • Designed and ran the onboarding program for three new roles, hiring and ramping five engineers in five months.
  • Integrated AI tooling into deployment and customer-success workflows, standardizing site documentation, customer reporting, and process analysis.

Sr. Manager of Customer Solutions Engineering · prior role

  • Grew deployed fleet 100% and customer base 75% in three months.
  • Expanded the Sales Engineering team from one to three engineers in three months.
  • Drove hardware and software roadmap changes through a formalized Voice of the Customer process.

Senior Sales Engineer · prior role

  • Cut sales cycle time 50% in six months by standardizing technical discovery and proposal processes.

Phantom Auto

Apr 2023 — Mar 2024 · Remote

Senior Sales Engineer

  • Rebuilt sales data collection and engineering hand-off, roughly halving hand-off cycle time and reducing deployment labor hours 75% year over year.
  • Partnered with Account Management to reposition sales strategy, expanding the customer base 30% in one year.
  • Led product enhancement initiatives, raising customer satisfaction by aligning the product team with customer need.

Wayfair

Mar 2022 — Mar 2023 · Remote

Senior Manager, Material Handling Automation

  • Owned the buying side of automation: vendor evaluation, technical selection, and capital justification.
  • Built the justification models and delivered four automation projects in twelve months — over $1M in projected savings at under a two-year payback.

Berkshire Grey

Jun 2021 — Mar 2022 · Remote

Solutions Design Engineer, Warehouse Automation

  • Developed the company-wide RFP/RFI response strategy across retail, e-commerce, 3PL, healthcare, grocery and parcel — saving 40% of time in the sales cycle.
  • Doubled the team's automation knowledge base in one year, covering AGVs, AMRs, robotic arms, robotic software, robotic vision, and goods-to-person technologies.

Radial Inc.

Jul 2020 — May 2021 · Remote

Senior Innovation Engineer, 3PL Autonomous Mobile Robotics

  • Led a brownfield AMR retrofit into a live, running facility, boosting picking throughput 50% UPH by coordinating vendor engineering, site operations and floor teams through commissioning.

Seegrid

Jan 2017 — Mar 2020 · Pittsburgh, PA & Remote

Senior Sales & Deployment Engineer, Automated Robotics Systems

  • Led multi-million-dollar robotics deployments from concept through implementation while supervising a team of two to four engineers.
  • Established the co-op and internship program.

FedEx Supply Chain

Dec 2015 — Dec 2016 · Pittsburgh, PA

Solutions Design Engineer, Warehousing & Logistics

  • Rebuilt warehouse facility modeling for the solutions design team: 33% faster model creation and 15% better accuracy.

Lowe's Home Improvement

Jun 2012 — Dec 2015 · Pittston & Pottsville, PA · Mooresville, NC

Field Industrial Engineer, Logistics Fulfillment

  • Led a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt project in outbound shipping delivering $250K in annual savings.

Education & Certifications

B.S. Industrial Engineering
Penn State University · 2013
Senior design capstone in 3D printing; manufacturing, logistics, human factors and systems coursework.
Lean Six Sigma Green Belt
Juran Institute · 2015
Climate Change: Learning for Action
Terra.do · 2025
AI Fluency: Framework & Foundations
Anthropic Academy · 2026

Core Skills

Solutions & Sales Engineering Customer Success & Account Expansion Robotics Deployment & Commissioning ROI / TCO Modeling Field Service & Fleet Operations Program & Project Management Lean Six Sigma / Continuous Improvement Cross-Functional Team Leadership Capital Justification Vendor Evaluation & Selection Technical Discovery RFP / RFI Strategy Site Assessment & Survey Process & Standard Creation Hiring, Onboarding & Team Scaling Voice of the Customer

Additional

Founder — Voyajer Productions LLC
Independent creative studio: music production, writing and media. thevoyajer.com
Volunteer & Service
ClimateVine · Neon Owl · Whet Foundation · WWF · THON · March of Dimes
Interests
Climate & conservation · Music · Nature & photography · Reading & writing · Travel · Fitness