Learn how a data science executive thinks about building scalable data systems at startups.
Nicholas Weininger
Veteran SWE manager, TLM, and leadership coach.
I spent 15 years at Google as IC, TLM, manager and manager-of-managers, leading teams of 3 to 45 engineers in both search and internal developer tools divisions, and driving infrastructure improvements that significantly improved latency, resource use, reliability and security of critical Google systems. I've also been VP of Engineering at a Series A startup where I grew a team of engineers and data scientists to solve gnarly climate-tech analysis and forecasting problems. And for the past several years, I've been an independent coach/consultant to startup CTOs, co-founders, and other technical leaders, helping them work through both team dynamics and technical design challenges.
Work
Handling performance problems with curiosity and empathy — Summerstir Solutions
https://summerstir.com/blog/handling-performance-problems-with-curiosity-and-empathyDistillation of my experience and thoughts on one of the most difficult management problems: how to handle low performers. See also this, on the team dynamics of difficult conversations: https://summerstir.com/blog/tips-for-tough-conversations
Experience
Summerstir Solutions
Leadership Coach
Aug 2022 - Present
Consulting with engineering and technical leaders on team building, optimizing team collaboration, project management, people management, and systems design.
- Helped several YC funded startup co-founders grow their teams and expand their product deployments while maintaining high morale and product quality.
Camus Energy
VP of Engineering
Nov 2021 - Aug 2022
Camus provides power utility companies with software that helps them decarbonize their grids faster while improving reliability and saving money.
- Grew the engineering team from 9 to 17 over the course of nine months, including major senior hires of veterans from companies such as Google and Facebook
- Coached technical leads on effective planning and execution, resulting in improved estimation, feature release timing, and productivity
Google
Senior Staff Software Engineer
Jul 2005 - Mar 2020
Google organizes the world's information to make it universally accessible and useful.
- Led the engineering team for Custom Search Engine, which launched a customizable version of search for website owners and grew it to >$100M annual revenue
- Launched several mobile search UI affordances for faster search on mobile devices
- Conceived and launched a series of search latency and resource efficiency improvements, making average search time hundreds of ms faster and reducing machine resource usage per search by double-digit percentages
- Grew an internal developer tools team from 5 to 45 engineers, building frameworks and tools for Google's own mobile app developers on Android and iOS
Related Blog Posts
Fractional Focus: Unveiling the role of Data Science leadership with Scott Strong 50 CTO Interview Questions (What To Look For + Red Flags) Discover 50 interview questions to ask CTOs to assess their leadership, tech expertise, and strategic mindset. Explore ideal responses and red flags to watch out for.
Fractional Focus: Building MVPs for startups with Sam Parks Learn how a top AI/ML software engineer thinks about MVPs from his own experience as an inventor, founder, advisor, and investor to startups.
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