Josh Tarbutton

I spent eight years in the Army Reserve before anything else on this page happened. Platoon Sergeant. I deployed to Iraq and came home responsible for 21 soldiers and $3.4 million in equipment. It taught me what accountability actually weighs. That is a different thing from being told about it.

I went to Georgia Tech for my undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering, then to Clemson for a PhD. My dissertation was on 5-axis CNC toolpath planning, writing GPU code to make machine tools cut faster and more accurately. I hold a patent in precision measurement and have over 50 peer-reviewed publications across mechatronics, vibration control, and additive manufacturing.

After Clemson I taught at the University of South Carolina and then UNC Charlotte. Nine years. I earned tenure. I ran labs funded by NSF, DOE, ONR, DARPA, NASA, and Boeing. Teaching was the job that taught me the most useful thing I know: how to take something complicated and make it clear enough to act on.

I left the tenure track in 2018 to start Bravo Team Engineering Design and Fabrication. For the first four years I took no paycheck from it. My salary came from the university and every dollar the firm earned went back into the firm. There was no outside capital and no investor round. I would rather the company owe its bench and its equipment to its own margin than to somebody else's terms. It does.

Bravo Team grew to 47 people. Three consecutive Inc. 5000 recognitions. The number two fastest-growing company in Charlotte in 2024. Along the way I built a CNC machine shop inside the company from one machine to five.

Before Bravo Team I started another company called Mammoth Machine and Design. I built it and my partners voted me out. It is still in business.

The reason any of this belongs on a business page: I wrote a dissertation on 5-axis toolpath planning and the firm runs a 5-axis shop. I ran labs funded by NSF, DOE, ONR, DARPA, NASA and Boeing, and the firm now works in the same industries those programs served. Nine years of teaching is why the first thing you get here is an explanation you can act on rather than a proposal you have to decode. I did not change careers in 2018. I changed who I do the work for.

I speak Spanish at a professional working level. I am an EO Charlotte member. I am a licensed Professional Engineer and a member of the Order of the Engineer. I invest in early-stage founders, and I am a longtime student of Bill Wilder's Wilder Method, which has done more for how I lead than any management book. I serve as Chairman of Bravo Team and I am still building.

What I do now is mostly listening. People bring me problems. I put the right people on them. The right people are the forty-six others at Bravo Team. I do not take the work myself anymore. It is the single best decision I have made for this company. Meet the team →