TMAbout excede
Built from inside the industry
excede wasn't conceived in a product workshop. It was built by licensed engineers who spent their careers in AEC firms — and got tired of watching great technical work get buried under operational drag.
Why excede exists
Our founders have seen the industry from every seat at the table: design engineer, to principal engineer, owner's representative, equipment manufacturer, and firm founder. At large firms, they lived the process burden — layers of coordination, reporting, and administration wrapped around every project. At their own boutique consultancy, Collectif Engineering, they lived the opposite problem: every principal wearing every hat, with business development, finance, operations, and delivery all competing for the same hours.
Both ends of the spectrum share the same root cause. The AEC industry runs on disconnected tools — accounting in one system, time tracking in another, pipeline in a spreadsheet, project status in someone's head. The gaps between those systems are filled with manual work done by the firm's most expensive people.
excede closes those gaps. One AI-driven operating platform for growth, execution, and finance — implemented by forward-deployed engineers who integrate your existing systems and configure your data the way your firm actually works. We built the platform we needed and couldn't buy.
The founders
Licensed engineers with decades of combined experience across design firms, owner's teams, and their own practice.
Jonathan Sharp
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder
Jonathan Sharp is the CEO and Co-Founder of excede. A licensed Professional Engineer and PHIUS Certified Passive House Consultant, Jon brings more than a decade of frontline AEC experience to the problem excede solves: the operational drag that keeps technical firms from doing their best work.
Jon’s career spans the full spectrum of the industry. He began at Vanderweil Engineers and rose to Associate Principal at AMA Group, leading engineering teams on Fortune 500 headquarters projects for clients including Fox Corporation, Disney, American Express, and BNP Paribas — over 2 million square feet and $500M+ in construction value. As Principal of Collectif Engineering, a boutique MEP consultancy he leads with co-founder Rafael Figueroa, he has experienced the other end of the scale: running business development, finance, operations, and delivery simultaneously in a firm where every principal wears many hats.
That dual perspective — the process burden of large firms and the resource constraints of small ones — is the founding insight behind excede. Jon holds dual Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Architectural Engineering from Penn State.
Rafael Figueroa
President & Co-Founder
Rafael Figueroa is the President and Co-Founder of excede. A licensed Professional Engineer, certified Project Management Professional, and ASHRAE High-Performance Building Design Professional, Rafael brings a rare 360-degree view of the built environment — having worked as a manufacturer, design engineer, owner’s representative, and firm founder.
Rafael began his career in custom air handling unit design before moving into MEP consulting, designing complex building systems at TRO Jung|Brannen, CannonDesign, Vanderweil Engineers, and Stantec. He then crossed to the owner’s side, leading MEP design and construction for WeWork and citizenM during their periods of rapid global expansion — an experience that taught him how design decisions play out through procurement, construction, and operations at scale.
He returned to consulting as Co-Founder and Partner of Collectif Engineering, the boutique MEP firm he leads with Jonathan Sharp, where the friction of running a modern engineering practice became the proving ground for excede. Rafael holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico. Having seen the industry from every seat at the table, he builds excede for all of them.
Talk to people who've sat in your seat
Every engagement starts with a conversation between your team and ours — and ours has run the same workflows you're trying to fix.