Why you might care

As both a leader and a team player, I offer experience and enthusiasm for a wide range of technical and creative endeavours, and a passion for educating others. I live to learn, and thrive when dealing with new people, technologies, cultures, and ideas. This passion is facilitated by an inquisitive mind and great communication skills. I have a deep empathy for customers and coworkers, and generally understand how people work.

Creativity and problem solving - aiming long-term for the path of least resistance - keep me motivated. I aim to make things as simple as possible, but not simpler (Albert Einstein said it best) and realise that there are usually no "right" answers, only the best ones right here and now. I am adept at working and collaborating using cutting edge and traditional technologies in physical and virtual space.

I speak: English (first language), German (fluent), French (advanced), and Spanish (basics)

Professional Objectives

I find work most fulfilling when it involves helping others to achieve their professional and personal goals. To that end, I'm actively immersing myself in machine learning studies and projects, in particular deep learning, because I believe these technologies will increasingly lead humanity towards widespread self-actualization.

Professional history

flowkey Early 2014 – present

flowkey is an industry-leading app to learn piano, available on Web, iOS, and Android, with over 10 million users. It is available in ten languages and is loved by users in almost every country of the world. The app has been awarded Editor's Choice by Apple, and is regularly featured as App of the Day in App Stores around the world. It has received tens of thousands of 5-star reviews, with a global average of around 4.7 stars. flowkey has an active co-operation with Yamaha, which is the world-leading producer of pianos and keyboards.

As one of the first "hires" at flowkey, I have assumed many roles over the years, requiring a wide range of technical and interpersonal skills. I played a significant role in shaping the early product, contributing both UX design and significant usability, code architecture, and performance improvements, helping to drive the business from zero to profitable within 12 months of initial launch.

My current role as technical lead and manager of flowkey's (only) team of mobile, full-stack web, ML, and DevOps engineers remains heavily technical. The majority of my time is spent hands on, either reviewing or writing code, while also mentoring, supporting, and growing (via hiring) our talented team of engineers. I am also heavily involved in the Product Strategy team, which involves me contributing UX design and prototyping for upcoming product improvements.

As an engineering manager, I have:

• Introduced regular 1:1 meetings to the team and drove their introduction and formalisation throughout the entire company.
• Introduced formal performance feedback procedures to the team and to the company.
• Documented and worked with the team to reduce knowledge bottlenecks, faciliated knowledge sharing by hosting and giving Dev Talks, and introduced "Experimentation Leave" to drive learning and innovation in the team.
• Led monthly "Teamwork and Communication" sessions to understand frictions within the team/company, and to promote psychological safety.
• Worked closely with project stakeholders to improve communication, efficiency, and happiness for the individuals involved.
• Kick-started regular exchange with all other team leads to understand how Engineering can assist with their operative / tooling needs, reducing frictions throughout the company.

Since flowkey's inception, I have proactively driven growth in the company by taking initiative to constantly improve user experience, leading project teams and the entire engineering team to push technological boundaries and achieve the seemingly impossible. Some of the projects I have personally taken a sole or leading role in include:

• Creating and open-sourcing flowkey's own version of Apple's UIKit, enabling 1:1 code sharing of flowkey's core product – the song player – between iOS and Android, with no compromise on quality.
• Implementing industry-leading uses of cross-platform Swift, e.g. on Android and for WebAssembly, improving productivity for our small team. flowkey was probably the first app to use Swift in production on Android, initially sharing audio DSP code, and later almost the entire song player.
• Implementing DSP algorithms in Swift from first principles. We now use the resulting code, which is faster and more energy efficient than the equivalents in Apple's famously performant Accelerate framework by up to 20%, on all our platforms.
• Architecting the current versions of our
  • Mobile App (React Native)
  • Song player
  • GraphQL Server
  • Continuous Deployment pipelines
  before also onboarding other engineers onto those projects.
• Optimizing our Python ML test framework for our audio note detection routines. Brought test time down from 40+ mins to two mins, and with further caching, down to two seconds.
• Contributed significantly (and/or exclusively) to various parts of internal tooling, like the content production processes, algorithms, and data structures.
• Working with our ML engineers to deploy and optimize models across all of our platforms, and architecting data structures, storage, deployment, and daily training of an ML-based song recommender system.
• Creating a TypeScript-only library to add strong type checking for GraphQL resolvers, with no code generation.
• Architecting and engineering global sharding for our MongoDB database and server infrastructure, setting up DNS failovers, automatically-deployed containerised server clusters, CDNs and related custom TLS infrastructure.
• Reducing server hardware cost by a factor of 15x, and solving scaling issues caused by ever-increasing server load by means of fundamental rearchitecting.
• Introducing secure multi-tier, multi-CDN, caching for our GraphQL-based app server.
• Optimizing performance across our entire stack by one or more orders of magnitude for: test build/run-time, app rendering performance (all platforms), server and app deployments, build speeds of all our core projects.

I have a keen eye for reducing iteration times in general, because I believe faster iteration saves even more time than the "on-paper" improvements. The environment is more conducive to entering the flow state, and engineers are happier.

Geordie Jay Creative Technology Solutions June 2011 - 2016

I provided personalised IT contracting services and training to a select number of private and small-business clients.

Services were both remote and on-site. Areas of work included web technologies (setup & training, code customisations), networks, security, consulting on and setting up tooling for creative interests like photography, video and music software / hardware, and technology integration: syncing, inter-operability and enabling multi-device workflows.

orderbird AG November 2013 – May 2014

Simplified and modularised the website's internal structure, so that much of the front-end development work I was originally employed for could be completed far more efficiently than expected by the employer. Optimised the entire web stack, from the node.js server – which I heavily extended, modularised and cleaned up – to the UX/UI.

Conceptualised and built various interfaces with (Netsuite), for lead management, customer reporting, and outside-the-box marketing purposes.

Cox & Co Language School, Wuppertal December 2012 - October 2013

I taught English to individuals and groups of 2-10 students using a communicative methodology, focusing on fluency of speech, helping students to understand and be understood.

In this time I developed a personal teaching style that combined conversation with practical grammar studies, using real world examples. Students were able to learn ambiguous or otherwise confusing aspects of the language easily by means of comparisons (in part: understanding why the correct way of saying something is not something else).

Gymnasium am Kothen, Wuppertal September 2012 - June 2013

Joined the school's regular teachers in the classroom to give and provide support in English lessons. My classes ranged from Grade 5 to Grade 12/13 inclusive. Coached students one on one and in small groups for exam prep, extra work, or to get them up to speed with the other students. Answered questions, and explained Australian cultural and linguistic curiosities.

Provided specialised training to two students who undertook external exams to attain the Cambridge Advanced English accreditation, or CAE. Provided training to other teachers on specific grammatical and cultural aspects of English.

Gecko Rescue IT Support, Brisbane AU November 2010 - May 2011

Provided remote and on-site technical support, consulting, and training to hundreds of private and small-business clients for PC, Mac, servers and mobile devices.

Supervised and trained new staff members with systems and procedures.

Hobbies and pastimes

Music

I have played music my entire life and have been paid for the pleasure as a guitarist, bassist, keyboardist, vocalist and/or accordionist since 2002.

I have extensive experience recording, producing, and mastering with various sound production products (DAWs) e.g. Sonar, Ableton Live, Logic. See examples at The Liar's Chair and my own soundcloud page.

Photography and film

My parents gave me my first camera for a school trip in 1998 and I have retained strong interest ever since. I am happiest shooting nighttime photography, mostly potraits and cityscapes.

In this time I have also worked on various film projects, being heavily involved in both filming and editing. My film work has included two mini-mockumentaries and a filmclip for a collaborative music project.

Travel and sport

I enjoy exploring and learning about new places and people, making travel an obvious choice of pastime for me. I spent nine months travelling solo around Japan and Europe at age 18, and I continue to do so whenever possible.

A healthy body and a good mindset make for more productive work and a more enjoyable personal and professional life. I value eating well and keeping active.

Education

University of Queensland (UQ) 2007 - 2012

Awarded "Dean's Commendation for High Achievement" for nine out of ten semesters of study. Overall GPA: 6.4 / 7.0 (Distinction to High Distinction average). Received achievement-based UQ Abroad scholarship to study on exchange at Université Lyon II, France (January – July 2010).

Full studies report available upon request.

Sarina Russo 2012

Program based around the core practical competencies required to establish and run a small business.