Join   Log In
  • Startup Jobs
  • Recruit
  • Discover
  • Blog
    Mike Saffitz

    Mike Saffitz

    Engineering Leader, Advisor, and Investor. ex-Stripe (Head of Engineering, Head of Reliability), co-founder Apptentive (acquired by Alchemer/KKR), ex-Microsoft.

    Entrepreneur Seattle University of Washing...
    There was a problem loading your content.
     
    Experience
    Stripe
    Stripe
    Engineering Manager 2019 - 2022 (over 3 years)
    - As Head of Reporting & Analytics: led team of 3 managers, 22 engineers, 1 product manager, and 4 cross-functional partners. Responsible for $Xm P&L; drove 500% increase... more in user adoption and 140% CAGR in revenue. Drove strategic alignment with executive team through annual planning and quarterly business review process. Member of “Technical Operating Group” consisting of CTO, CPO, and senior engineering leaders across the company.
    - Asked by CTO and Head of Infrastructure to serve as Interim Head of Reliability. Grew team 65% to 41 in 6 months-- 4 managers, 2 Sr. Staff engineers, and 35 ICs. Set and consistently met company-level reliability targets— no major incidents & > 99.999% availability—during a period with 2 major architectural changes and 1 major customer event. Introduced and scaled reliability frameworks across > 200 engineering teams to track initiatives and outcomes.
    - Strong focus on recruiting, mentorship, and company development: Consistent top 10% (by volume) interviewer; member of candidate review panel; co-chair/engineering-sponsor for refresh of candidate review process; leader of calibration sessions covering 100s of engineers. Regular mentor to managers and staff-level engineers. Frequent host of engineering manager trainings across multiple topics. 3x participant in Grace Hopper recruiting events. Company-wide Hackathon co-organizer.
    Apptentive
    Exit
    Apptentive
    CTO, Co-Founder 2011 - 2022 (almost 12 years)
    I co-founded Apptentive in 2011 with the goal of helping large organizations use their mobile apps to listen to their customers, derive insight, and take action. I built the... more Product Engineering organization from 3 technical co-founders to an interdisciplinary team of 20 people including mobile, front-end, and platform engineers, DevOps, QA, data science, product management and product design. The team was primarily based in Seattle, with several members geographically distributed in the US and an office in Kyiv, Ukraine. We are honored to have twice been included in Seattle Business Magazine’s list of "100 Best Companies to Work For".

    Apptentive’s SDKs have been installed over 1 billion times, and we powered hundreds of millions of conversations generating millions of pieces feedback for some of the world's best companies including Starbucks, eBay, Disney, Nordstrom, CNN, Philips, and more.

    Our infrastructure powered over 2 billion API requests per day while maintaining robust reliability and efficiency measures. We were powered by a cloud native architecture running on AWS and making use of Kubernetes and NoSQL data stores.

    As the CTO and a member of the leadership team, partnered deeply with other teams (sales, customer success, marketing, HR, finance) to establish and execute on shared initiatives.
    Conceivian
    Conceivian
    Innovation Lead 2011 - 2012 (9 months)
    Conceivian builds innovative mobile and web-based software products for clients across a variety of industries. With a focus and expertise in initial ideation, design, and... more development Conceivian brings ideas to life!

    As an Innovation Lead, I managed a product development team of developers and designers building products for clients.

    I also participated as a developer within the team building highly scalable products using Ruby on Rails with rich, dynamic UI built with jQuery and Backbone.js.
    Microsoft
    Microsoft
    Program Manager, Windows Phone 2006 - 2011 (about 5 years)
    - Program managed the development of Windows Phone Developer Tools, including specifying requirements and coordinating development across geographically diverse partner teams.

    -... more Led a team responsible for application compatibility initiatives spanning the 1200-person Windows Phone product group resulting in increased defect fix rates.

    - Worked in a small team drafting product strategy, identifying and segmenting target markets, detailing value propositions, and creating disclosure and engagement plans.

    - Evangelized product offerings and built customer relationships as a frequent participant, author, and speaker across Asia, Europe, and North America.
    Brigadoon.com
    Brigadoon.com
    Software Engineer 1996 - 1998 (almost 2 years)
    Developed web solutions using Perl, administered Solaris servers, developed Internet "getting started disks" for over 100 POPs, and served as the resident Mac expert at a... more startup Internet Service Provider.
    Founder
     
    Employee
    Brigadoon.com, Microsoft, Conceivian, Apptentive, Stripe
    Investor
     
    Incubator
     
    Advisor
     
    Attorney
     
    Board Member
     
    Mentor
     
    Member
     
    Acquired
     
     
    Education
     
    About
    Skills
    Leadership Management Product Development Engineering Team Leadership Cross-Functional Team Leadership Mobile Development
    Help · Blog · Twitter · Terms · Privacy Policy & Cookies · Unsubscribe · Cookie Preferences · Press · Profile not verified