Dan Kim

hello@dankim.com

Summary

  • Pragmatic, empathetic, collaborative leader well-versed in technical strategy, roadmap development, project execution, stakeholder engagement, and engineering process.
  • Dedicated people-first manager who develops team members through comprehensive performance management, career coaching, and mentorship while fostering inclusive environments that engage and challenge engineers at all levels.
  • Extensive hands-on experience with Kotlin and Java delivering high-quality, well-regarded consumer and enterprise applications in both web and mobile contexts.
  • Active contributor to the Kotlin and Android communities with nearly a dozen conference talks and published a variety of blog posts to guide and mentor others in the community.
  • Values-driven approach focused on autonomy, transparency, accountability, empathy, remote work, communication, and celebrating great work and people early and often.

Experience

VP, Software Engineering – Skyline Furniture (2/2023 – 4/2025)

  • Created the first dedicated software engineering team from 0 to 1 in collaboration with senior leadership and operations team. Established technical strategy working closely with executive leadership to align technical priorities with business objectives, recruited and hired key staff, and designed all-new engineering processes and standards. Led multiple product releases that have helped to realize operational efficiencies, establishing the team as a key pillar for business decision support and operations.
  • Designed and developed a new web solution focused on reliability and data-driven insights. Architected a new web application built on Kotlin, JetBrains Exposed, and Postgres to replace legacy client applications which had historically poor reliability and data integrity. The new system has achieved 99% uptime, experienced zero critical incidents, and maintained performant response times. By capturing and reporting on more comprehensive and reliable data in partnership with operations, finance, and sales, teams are now able to make more precise, data-driven decisions that were previously very difficult. Key improved insights include material inventory and purchasing, production costs, customer pricing and margins, and sales forecasting.
  • Managed a fully remote team of 3 engineers, delivering 100% of planned product releases on schedule. Led comprehensive performance management, career development, and project execution that accelerated team member skill development and enhanced code quality and system reliability standards.

Engineering Manager – Twitter (8/2021 – 1/2023)

  • Delivered modern UI components to 200M+ daily users by accelerating Jetpack Compose adoption across high-value surfaces including home timeline, DMs, and Communities. Additionally established Twitter as a leader in Compose by rolling out initiatives to educate engineers and promote the use of Compose, including internal presentations, conference talks, and strategic partnerships with Google.
  • Established a consistent, collaborative approach for developing Android UI strategy. Responsible for designing and delivering technical strategy, quarterly goals, and annual roadmaps for Android UI in deep collaboration with product managers, design teams, feature engineers, and directors that aligned to broader organizational goals. Qualitative and quantitative surveys were conducted in partnership with cross-functional stakeholders including product and design teams, which consistently reported high satisfaction scores and increased engineering velocity.
  • Managed a fully remote, distributed team of 7 engineers across multiple countries and time zones, delivering 100% of planned initiatives on schedule. Led performance management including regular 1:1s, goal setting, comprehensive performance reviews, and mentorship sessions. During a tumultuous time in the company's history, maintained team engagement and collaboration that resulted in successful delivery of all product releases and measurable improvements in engineering velocity as measured by quarterly satisfaction surveys.


Senior Android Engineer – 37signals (6/2013 – 5/2021)

  • Delivered two highly-rated Android applications serving millions of users worldwide, maintaining 4.7-star ratings on Google Play Store. Architected and engineered Basecamp 3 and HEY applications from the ground up in close collaboration with product and design using Kotlin, Retrofit, OkHttp, Coroutines, Room, LiveData, and Webviews, achieving high marks for user experience and feature implementation.
  • Designed and developed an open source framework for an entirely new approach to blending native and web components. Co-authored a new, unique approach to integrating native apps and Ruby on Rails web components working closely with backend engineering teams that previously never existed. Required extensive experimentation, research, and troubleshooting to develop a reliable framework, ultimately leading to the Turbo Android open source project now used by hundreds of developers worldwide. While the project has morphed over time, the basic mechanics remain and continue to drive production-ready applications across the Rails and mobile development communities.
  • Led developer advocacy and outreach, leading to partnership opportunities and increased product visibility in the Android and Kotlin communities. Elevated 37signals’ presence in the Android community through a combination of writing and conference presentations. Drove new partnerships that resulted in our applications being featured in an Android Developer’s video, Google IO keynotes, and KotlinConf keynotes.


Director, Software Engineering – Designkitchen (2/2008 – 7/2012)

  • Grew and led a team of 10-15 engineers, delivering complex client projects on time and budget in a dynamic agency environment. Responsible for career development and growth of engineers, recruiting and hiring, and successfully balancing project execution with team health across multiple concurrent client engagements.
  • Designed and developed a comprehensive technical strategy in collaboration with senior leadership and account managers. Responsible for presenting that strategy to clients, implementing an organizational structure to support it, and ultimately executing projects upon that strategy working closely with cross-functional project teams.

Additional experience from 2000-2013 available on LinkedIn.

Skills & Education

Leadership

Engineering Management, Cross-Functional Team Leadership, Technical Strategy and Roadmaps, Stakeholder Relationships, Product and Design Collaboration, Open Source Community Engagement, Remote Team Management, Technical Communication, Project Execution and Delivery, Coaching and Career Development

Technical

Kotlin, Coroutines, Compose, JetBrains Exposed, Retrofit, SQLDelight, SQL, HTML/CSS, JavaScript

Education

Indiana University Bloomington – B.S. Business