Software Architect | Python Expert | PACS/DICOM Specialist

Greg Smethells

25 years designing high-performance distributed systems. Architect of an FDA-approved orthopedic PACS serving over 25% of US orthopedic practices. Published researcher in computational physics.

Building Mission-Critical Healthcare Systems

I've spent my career designing and developing software to solve problems. Mathematics, physics, and lately in medicine. Invariably, this led me to leadership positions involving multidisciplinary teams. Regardless of where I was or what I was doing, though, I have always poured myself into my work and the people around me.

I have a broad range of experience. It started in physics and mathematics, then moved onto computer science where I have come to specialize in software architecture and cybersecurity. During my time developing software, I published papers in major journals in physics and computer science, helped sustain our nation's readiness through Nuclear Stockpile Stewardship, and for the past two decades I have applied my passion to medicine, helping people get out of pain and back to their lives.

For the US Department of Energy, I worked on a toolkit for physics simulations that ran on massively parallel supercomputers churning through vast amounts of data. Work that involved having a security clearance and deep knowledge of how distributed systems function.

However, my longest running adventure involved an FDA-approved medical device for orthopedics.

I arrived as the company had just pivoted from accounting services for medical practices to a new pre-operative planning medical device for orthopedics. I was one of two software engineers but that quickly became just me, plus a CEO, small support team, and a handful doing sales - a dozen people total. At the time, with limited runway and many accounts unstable on my hire date, I wondered whether I could help right the ship in time. Day-by-day, I wrote software, ran the datacenter, made untold numbers of hires, and slowly rebuilt the company's technology and reputation. Within a few years, I was the CTO of a service that clinics and operating rooms depended upon daily. By the time of its acquisition, Medstrat ran imaging for over a quarter of the orthopedic practices in the US and reached $10M in ARR. I continued on as the Technology Director after the acquisition. Now though, I am seeking my next story.

Thus far, it has been a wild ride. I have researched some of the hardest mathematical problems with the smartest people I've ever met. I have had logins on the largest supercomputers in the world. I have built software, teams, and a company from the ground up. I'm ready now for something new. What do you have that I can help you with?

25+
Years of Experience
25%+
US Orthopedic Practices Served by PACS that I Architected
4+ PB
Medical Images Stored By My PACS Architecture
$10M
ARR at Acquisition of Company I Built
2
Published Papers in Scientific Journals
Q
DOE Security Clearance (inactive)

Career Timeline

November 2023 — Present
Medstrat Technology Director
Zimmer Biomet | Downers Grove, Illinois
Directed three technology groups managing one of the largest orthopedic PACS installations in the United States.
  • Oversaw software engineering, quality testing, and system administration
  • Built patient portal enabling patients to upload, download, view, and share their own medical images
  • Maintained FDA-approved medical device software serving over 25% of US orthopedic practices with $16M+ ARR
  • Ensured compliance with ISO 62304, ISO 14971, IEC 81001-5-1, and HIPAA requirements
  • Achieved full ISO 81001-5-1 compliance, including the organization's first SBOM, CVE vulnerability disclosure report, and penetration testing
  • Led Design History File remediation and technical preparation of 510(k) submission
February 2006 — November 2023
Chief Technology Officer
Medstrat, Inc. | Downers Grove, Illinois
Architected and led complete redesign of company's PACS system using modern client-server architecture and software design patterns.
  • Designed and developed FDA-approved PACS for orthopedic imaging, radiology dictation, and pre-operative surgical planning
  • Built and scaled system to provide over 4 petabytes of HIPAA-compliant medical image storage
  • Developed industry-first DICOM-enabled, Internet-accessible backup system
  • Implemented GitLab CI/CD pipelines and automated testing, and directed infrastructure-as-code adoption
  • Established security-by-design practices including STRIDE threat modeling and SSL/TLS and SSH hardening
  • Implemented security assurance through SAST, DAST during SDLC verification, and CVE monitoring
  • Led migration to Google Cloud Platform while maintaining 99.9%+ uptime
  • Defined technology strategy that drove company growth to $10M ARR
  • Participated in regular board meetings as CTO, reporting on technology strategy and company progress
June 2002 — September 2005
Computer Scientist / Project Leader
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory | Livermore, California
Developed PACT, a high-performance I/O toolkit for physics simulations on massively parallel DOE supercomputers.
  • Created first autoconf/automake build system for portable C library across all UNIX platforms (HP-UX, Solaris, Linux, AIX, IRIX)
  • Implemented HDF5 I/O support enabling applications to abstract data file format output
  • Developed Python language bindings for scientific data I/O
  • Promoted to Project Leader after two years
August 2000 — May 2002
Teaching Assistant
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Computer Sciences Department
Supported CS 354 Computer Organization & Programming by holding office hours, answering student questions in-person and by email, proctoring exams, and grading homework and exams. Course covered computer architecture, MIPS assembly language (SPIM), binary arithmetic, and low-level programming fundamentals.
June 1997 — August 2001
Research Assistant
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Chemistry Department
Conducted computational chemistry research implementing convergence accelerators (Levin-u transform, Wynn rho algorithm) in quadruple-precision FORTRAN77 to compute three-electron atomic integrals with greater than 20 digits of precision.

Technical Skills

Programming Languages

Expert-level Python development with extensive experience across multiple languages and paradigms.

Python (Expert) Java JavaScript C/C++ Gherkin
Leadership

Building and leading multidisciplinary engineering teams, technical hiring, and organizational transformation.

CTO Experience Team Building Mentorship Technical Interviewer
Software Architecture

Distributed systems design, high-performance computing, and scalable architectures for mission-critical applications.

Distributed Systems Client-Server Microservices Design Patterns HPC
DevOps & Cloud

End-to-end DevSecOps practices with cloud infrastructure and observability.

GitLab CI/CD Docker Kubernetes GCP Datadog
Cybersecurity

Security-first development with comprehensive vulnerability management and system hardening.

SSL/TLS SAST DAST OWASP ZAP CVE Monitoring
Systems & Tools

Expert-level Linux administration and comprehensive command-line tooling proficiency.

Linux (Expert) MariaDB Nginx RabbitMQ Celery Gunicorn
AI Development Tools

Proficient with modern AI-assisted development workflows and tooling.

Claude Code Cursor MCP Gemini Skills Subagents
Web Development

Full-stack web application development with modern frameworks and tooling.

Flask JavaScript HTML/CSS Bootstrap
Medical Technology

Deep expertise in medical imaging systems, regulatory compliance, and healthcare standards.

PACS DICOM HL7 DCMTK ISO 62304 ISO 14971 ISO 81001-5-1 FDA HIPAA

Open Source

GitLab
Claude Config

Professional configuration management for Claude Code with automatic updates.

View on GitLab →
GitLab
Spacing

A code formatting and spacing tool for maintaining consistent whitespace and style conventions across codebases.

View on GitLab →
GitLab
dep2req

Extract dependencies from pyproject.toml to requirements.txt in seconds. No more waiting for pip-compile to finish.

View on GitLab →
GitHub
DCMTK

Fork of the DICOM Toolkit (DCMTK), a collection of libraries and applications implementing the DICOM standard for medical imaging. On-going contributor to the open source project.

View on GitHub →
GitLab
GitLab

Complete fork of GitLab, the DevOps platform. On-going contributor to the open source project.

View on GitLab →

Publications

Improvements on the application of convergence accelerators for the evaluation of some three-electron atomic integrals
Paul J. Pelzl, Gregory J. Smethells, and Frederick W. King
Physical Review E, vol. 65, no. 3, art. 036707, 2002
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.65.036707 →
Numerical evaluation of Hilbert transforms for oscillatory functions: a convergence accelerator approach
Frederick W. King, Gregory J. Smethells, Geir T. Helleloid, and Paul J. Pelzl
Computer Physics Communications, vol. 145, no. 2, pp. 256–266, 2002
DOI: 10.1016/S0010-4655(02)00155-8 →

Academic Background

2000 — 2002
M.S., Computer Sciences
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1994 — 1999
B.S., Physics and Mathematics
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

Let's Connect

Seeking fully remote (zero travel) software engineering leadership roles, and open to technical consulting, fractional CTO, and board advisory engagements.

Available for Opportunities

Deep expertise in Python development, software architecture, and cybersecurity, with specialized domain knowledge in PACS/DICOM systems, healthcare technology, DevSecOps, and medical device regulatory compliance.

Python PACS/DICOM Healthcare Tech DevSecOps ISO 62304