Leo Kim

Forward Share Network is an operator-led collective of fractional elite entrepreneurial experts and advisors supporting the creation and scale of human-centered, tech-forward companies.

Led engineering teams building product, growth, platform, internal tools, and infrastructure capabilities spanning areas such as identity and access management, AI-powered features, SMS/email/push communications, customer onboarding, growth funnel and sales demo experiences, the Justworks mobile app, and other many other critical data services and functions. Oversaw 50+ engineers, senior managers, and contractors spanning multiple countries. Drove numerous organizational and technological initiatives across product and engineering group including adoption of service-oriented architecture and observability practices, AI-enabled productivity enhancements to operational tools, experimentation, continuous streamlining and consolidation of infrastructure and services, and much more.

Led several engineering teams responsible for building business-critical SMS and email marketing products generating >95% of revenue for multi-billion dollar startup. Partnered with product, infrastructure, and operations teams to build SMS and Email technical deliverability foundation for the company. Worked with technical leads and engineering managers to expand, scale, and continuously iterate on product, architecture, and tools to drive 2-3x YoY growth and handle billions of messages a month. Responsible for roadmaps accounting for half a dozen company-wide initiatives and numerous product and infrastructure deliverables. Turns out it takes a lot of work to buzz people’s phones!

Led several engineering teams to build tools for patient recruitment, electronic data capture (EDC), and physician network management. Laid the groundwork for ensuring the health of the engineering org by creating the career ladder, ramping up recruitment and interview processes to triple the team size, developing management tier, and driving performance review process. Drove development of several technology and product initiatives including an EHR data mining system using OMOP, Salesforce integration for patient recruitment funnel, and several iterations of a proprietary clinical trial EDC system. Created automation and platform engineering functions to address functional engineering gaps and infrastructural needs. Leveled-up monitoring and observability and added platform infrastructure, testing automation, quality assurance, and security functions. Worked with the product team to determine resourcing, formulate goals, and to execute on quarterly engineering- and product-focused OKRs. Partnered with operations and quality teams to define company compliance programs.

Led backend engineering practice to build consumer-facing features on e-commerce website selling generic prescription drugs. Pushed several company initiatives including Blink "Smart Deal" Pricing project, an A/B testing framework and coordinated with data team and product managers to set up experiments, the design and implementation of guest accounts feature, and several other projects. Improved development experience by moving the team to trunk-based development with tagged releases. Ran weekly meeting to align on serverside software development best practices, address technical debt, and to move forward on architectural direction. Drove migration from Python 2 to Python 3.7. Deleted a ton of bad code. Managed and mentored backend engineers, set expectations and goals for career growth, and promoted three of them. Collaborated with HR business partners to come up with initiatives to improve morale, transparency, and diversity and inclusion in hiring. Worked with recruiting to jumpstart the hiring process. Stack was Python, MySQL, Flask, SQLAlchemy, Redis, Celery, AWS, Docker, React+Redux.

Managed engineering organization including remote workers in Spain. Oversaw the development of several critical security features for the mobile app. Collaborated with operations team to help develop workflows for tracking patient health care issues. Partnered with Head of Product to develop roadmap for building out features around caregiver workforce management and job opportunities. Worked with Chief Compliance Officer to establish HIPAA policies. Rolled out several compliance-related IT projects, set up internal IT support functions, and enacted basic security policies around PHI handling, encryption, and data loss prevention.

Led backend engineering team to build a platform for a tech-forward home healthcare service to support a workforce of several hundred caregivers and internal operations team. Worked on a caregiver mobile application that administered care plans, tracked health care outcomes for seniors, and managed workforce functions like payroll, invoicing, scheduling, and centralized operational oversight. Used lots of boring tech (Java, Maven, Hibernate, Dropwizard, Postgres, Jade4J) mixed with shiny new tech (ES6, React, React Native) on lean amount of infrastructure (EC2, S3 + Cloudfront, RDS) integrating with a number of 3rd-party services (Stripe, Facebook Auth, Salesforce, Mandrill, ADP, various Google services, Twilio, Zendesk, plus more I'm forgetting). Found an interesting bug in the Java compiler along the way (https://github.com/leothekim/javac-1.8.0_51-b16-NPE).

Led a team to develop and enhance the MMS Automation service. Shepherded integration of Microsoft Azure cluster management and provisioning and MongoDB cluster automation on Windows clusters.

Worked on various features and infrastructure projects for fast-growing location-based geolocation service/social app, thereby bringing sunshine, laughter, mirth, and unadulterated check-in and badge-earning delight to millions of DAUs around the world. Built scaled infrastructure such as a backend queueing system, service discovery, various monitoring systems, dynamic configuration, A/ B testing, etc. using Kestrel, Finagle, Apache ZooKeeper, and bits of duct tape. Collaborated with and supported product teams in scaling numerous features such as search, API version management, service health and monitoring, and much more. Stabilized our fast-growing MongoDB cluster in EC2 with blood, sweat, tears, sheer willpower, spirited conversations with the MongoDB CTO, and a little ingenuity (https://github.com/foursquare/mongo/commits/r2.4.4_fs). Built several product features including gamification of the app with checkin leaderboard + points, tips + lists and sharing. Led cross-functional squad to reboot mass-marketing email system.

Built the LimeWire Music Store, an online streaming music service, from the ground up. Architected and developed the entire stack including core data model, media ingestion, payment processing, user and session management, frontend UI, music reviews and content, and music clearance management. Led several developer teams based in New York City and in India. Kicked off effort to re-architect and design second-generation music service until untimely end due to lawsuit (https://www.cnet.com/news/riaa-wins-big-in-limewire-lawsuit/). Interestingly, several team members seeded the Spotify NYC office where product ideas for our streaming music service grew and evolved.