John Damask is a technology executive, software engineer, and AI specialist with over 25 years of experience building systems, teams, and departments that modernize how organizations use technology. He currently runs Amroja LLC where he develops software products and also serves executive teams as a fractional CTO to lead AI acceleration and navigate the landscape with speed, clarity, and sound governance.
Before forming Amroja, John was a founding member of the technology organization at Flagship Pioneering, a leading biotechnology investment firm based in Cambridge, MA. At Flagship, he established the Digital Science department to assist portfolio companies with cloud computing, bioinformatics, data management, and software engineering. His team created Flagship’s standard Digital Backbone for Biotech, enabling Flagship to rapidly launch new companies that are technologically-mature from day one. He co-led the firm’s AI adoption strategy and pioneered a model for portfolio companies to benefit from collective data. Earlier, he spent over a decade at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, culminating as Global Head of Cloud, where he led the organization’s transformation to AWS.
Beyond his executive work, John is a hands-on builder obsessed with using AI to shrink the distance between ideas and reality. He recently released Now I Get It!, an application that uses AI to translate scientific papers into accessible, interactive web pages that anyone can understand. He regularly releases free, open source software and tools from his own engineering practice, and writes actively on agentic engineering and practical AI adoption.