CONTACT

info@kiecza.net

in/danielkiecza

kiecza.net/daniel/

Boston, USA

SKILLS

Bootstrap product
10 years
Build teams
11 years
Management
11 years
Lead & Mentor
12 years
Distributed teams
13 years
NLP/STT/ML
15 years
SWE
20 years

 

German
English
French
Spanish
Korean

EDUCATION

Master of Science in Computer Science

KIT — Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Visiting researcher

Carnegie Mellon University

Daniel Kiecza

Senior Staff Software Engineer, Google

About me

Build products at the edge of innovation rooted in well-articulated user needs.

Craft high-momentum teams: deliver the future with even just a team of a dozen.

Metacognition-driven work: think slow to build fast.

Zero-to-one product successes:

  • Government-space OSINT turnkey system,
  • Novel Google education product,
  • Niche-to-standard Google-scale shared infrastructure.

Work experience

  • Uber Tech Lead Jul 2023 - present
    Google Classroom, Instruction & Assessment Team | Google

    UTL for a team of ~40

    • Transformative, AI-powered teaching & learning features in Google Classroom.

    Skills: Lead & mentor, influence with(out) authority, innovation, AI

  • Technical co-founder, TLM, Chief Architect 2018 - 2023
    Google Classroom Practice Sets | Google

    Technical co-founder of internal Edu moonshot project

    • Served as TLM, chief architect, and champion for unpacking the vision.
    • Built highly productive, cohesive, and diverse eng team of 20 SWEs.
    • Led team through reorgs, pivots, pilots, and betas to establish PMF as Practice Sets.

    TLM and chief architect of Practice Sets eng team

    • Delivered GA launch of Google Classroom Practice Sets.
    • Aided strategic shift toward transformative teaching and learning.
    • 1 patent

    Skills: Bootstrap; build & motivate teams; management; innovation; product dev

  • Tech Lead Manager 2010 - 2018
    Google A/B testing and launch system | Google

    • Generalized Google Search A/B test & launch system for use by other teams.

    • Established generalized system as Google-wide standard.

    • Led extension to Mobile apps and landed Google-wide system for Mobile.

    Skills: Distributed teams & systems; management; influence with(out) authority; OKRs

  • Senior Scientist/Engineer 2000 - 2010
    Multimedia Monitoring System | BBN Technologies

    • Built Raytheon BBN M3S media monitoring business — contributed to all aspects of product and system dev.

    • Operationalized NLP/ML algorithms for reliable deployment in hard-to-access locations.

    • Demonstrated expertise in NLP model training including STT and text-annotation.

    • Coauthored 2 papers ( 1, 2) and 1 book chapter (1), filed 7 patents (1 issued)

    Skills: Bootstrap; product innovation; research; NLP/STT

  • Part-time Research Assistant 1995 - 1999
    Interactive Systems Lab, Carnegie Mellon University & KIT

    Produced MS Thesis: Data-Driven Determination of Dictionary Units for Korean LVCSR

    Skills: NLP/STT; ML; Research