Diego Watanabe

Engineering Manager

Flytedesk•  September 2021 - Present

-Evaluated engineering and hiring processes to improve retention and scale team. -Designed and built ETL processes using Python, Airflow, Google Big Query and S3. -Hired 5 direct reports to offload 3 major projects from the VP of engineering. -Implemented performance and compensation reviews. -Built BI tools in Python to offer insights into users’ ad revenue and application performance. -Built Flutter companion application to release in both Android and iOS. -Negotiated features, deadlines and projects with founders and stakeholders. -Implemented mentoring and pair programming to help new hires be successful. -Built, designed, and maintained application features in Vue.js, PHP, and Java.

Technical Lead

Wayfair•  August 2019 - May 2021

Designed and built features for the order changes team as a tech lead with 5 direct reports for shipment tracking, search, and customer support agent tools in Swift and Kotlin. Managed and mentored engineers in native iOS and Android teams. Worked on a team of senior and staff iOS engineers creating POCs of new iOS features such as Combine and SwiftUI. Negotiated features and deadlines with product and stakeholders. Created plan to transition from MVVM to VIPER architecture. Created a plan to transition away from a PHP monolith to Java microservices and helped implement it. Helped two junior engineers move up to senior level.

Technical Lead

iHeart•  May 2018 - August 2019

Designed and built features for the flagship iHeartRadio iOS application as a tech lead with 8 direct reports for podcasts, dark mode, and smart feeds. Managed and mentored engineers on the iOS team. Led a cross-functional team that partnered with 3rd parties to integrate hardware such as Sonos, Apple TV, Apple Watch, and Google Home. Managed about 6 engineers across iOS, Android and full-stack web to deliver hardware integrations. Led company-wide initiative to adopt automated testing and CI/CD pipelines in mobile. Trained QA engineers to write UI tests in XCUITest and Espresso. Trained iOS team to adopt test driven development principles to improve test coverage. Built CI/CD pipeline using Jenkins to automate releases to App and Play stores. Negotiated API features with the backend team and led conversations to come to a compromise whenever disagreements arose between backend and mobile teams.

Lead Data and Mobile Engineer

AdHawk•  April 2015 - May 2018

Joined as the first engineer and built out MVP in native Android and iOS, Ruby on Rails on the backend, React on the frontend and Python for ETL tools used to raise $10M in VC funding. Created demos and presentations used to raise money and make sales. Implemented Agile processes and established release cycles and processes for all teams. Established engineering culture and designed hiring processes and interviews to build a team to support this. Created demos and presentations used to raise money. Sourced and hired 40 contributors including engineers, designers, and product managers to establish the data, mobile and web teams.. Collaborated directly with the co-founders to build out the MVP and initial paid version of the product that eventually reached $10M ARR. Managed health of the product and teams using various analytics tools and provided insights back to co-founders and eventually product managers. Established documentation and processes to allow new hires to be successful. Mentored new hires from many backgrounds and helped with career development. Implemented performance and compensation reviews. Managed 25 direct reports as the manager and main contributor of both the mobile and data teams in Swift, and Java for mobile and Python and Java for data.