Join a community of top-tier engineers and work with the best

Work with our Mentors and draw on their hard-won experience through small-group sessions and 1:1 mock interviews. Leave each one with sharp, actionable feedback.

Mentors

Adam Wolff

He/Him
Ex-VP of Engineering @ Robinhood
Adam is the former VP of Engineering at Robinhood. Previously, he was an Engineering Director at Facebook where he helped pioneer React.
LinkedIn

Alejandro Marcu

He/Him
Software Engineer @ Figma
Alejandro joins Formation with 20+ years of software engineering experience. He enjoys building frameworks, notably at Facebook where he developed tools allowing engineers to define graph database schemas and auto-generate data access code.
LinkedIn

Alex Jenkins

He/Him
Talent @ Ramp
Alex brings over 10 years of talent and leadership recruiting experience at companies like PayPal, Twitter, Stripe, and most recently, Ramp.
LinkedIn

Alex Reyes

He/Him
Diversity Technical Sourcer @ Meta
Alex brings 5+ years of experience of working at both the US Air Force Reserve and Meta. He coached & mentored hundreds of Veterans and guided them to roles at Meta Platforms.
LinkedIn

Alex Staninger

He/Him
SDE II @ Microsoft
Alex has 3+ years of experience on teams at IBM and Microsoft, where he currently works on Azure Kubernetes Service on Azure Stack HCI.
LinkedIn

Allen Miao

He/Him
Software Engineer @ Nextdoor
Allen has been on Nextdoor’s core iOS Engineering team for 3 years.
LinkedIn

Alvin Zablan

He/Him
Software Engineering Educator @ Structy
Alvin brings over 7 years of software engineering experience, both in the tech industry at companies like Google and now at his own very popular education startup, Structy.
LinkedIn

Austen McDonald

He/Him
Chief Technology Officer @ Reflex Integration Through Play
Austen brings 16+ years of engineering, leadership, and hiring experience. Previously a Senior Engineering Manager at Meta, he chaired the iOS and Android Hiring Committees, hiring thousands of engineers.
LinkedIn

Kyle Gabriel

He/Him
Senior Staff Software Engineer @ Uber
Kyle has 10+ years of experience and has excelled on high-performing teams at Nextdoor, Apple, and most recently Uber, where he works as a tech lead on the Rider mobile team.

I look for candidates who can clearly describe their thought process and defend the decisions that they are making.

LinkedIn

Ayush Jain

He/Him
Senior SDE @ Meesho
Ayush has 4+ years of experience. In his role at Meesho, he leads the Recommendations team which provides user-based recommendations in an e-commerce setup.
LinkedIn

Ben Muschol

He/Him
Software Engineer @ Airtable
Ben brings 6 years of experience and has excelled at Airtable, Airbnb, Amazon, & Hubspot. At Airbnb, he provided tooling to automate hundreds of database upgrades with minimal downtime.
LinkedIn

Brett DeWoody

He/Him
Lead Frontend Engineer @ Firstbase
Brett founded his first company in 2005 and has been engineering ever since. He’s mentored countless engineers in his 17+ years of experience.
LinkedIn

Brian Zhu

He/Him
Software Engineer @ Airbnb
Brian has 4+ years of experience and has driven innovation on talented teams at Tableau and Airbnb, where most recently he has created machine learning models to stop fake accounts.
LinkedIn

Bronze Compere

He/Him
Software Engineer @ Spotify
Bronze brings his experience as a software engineer to Formation as a Mentor. He believes that his decision to move abroad and invest fully in tech, has made him a better engineer.
LinkedIn

Bryce Oldham

He/Him
Lead Engineer @ Slalom
Bryce has 8 years of experience working for Charles Schwab, GM, Amazon, & Apple. At Apple, he led a team that built and migrated services to AWS in their Ad Platforms organization.
LinkedIn

Charles St. Louis

He/Him
COO @ Element Finance
Charles advised us on decentralized governance processes and the different career paths for software engineers in the blockchain space.
LinkedIn

Cherry Hertz

She/Her
Senior Manager @ Auth0
Cherry spoke to us about her journey into DevOps. She shared her tips for engineers working toward a career in the field.
LinkedIn

Chislaine Cruz

She/Her
Software Engineer @ Oscar Health
Chislaine brings 2+ years of experience to Formation as a Mentor. At Oscar Health, she enjoys deep technical dives with her SWE team to ensure the end user has a positive experience.
LinkedIn

Clint Hall

He/Him
Tech Lead @ Elastic
Clint has 20 years of experience in engineering, incl. 6 years at Facebook. He is the Tech Lead at Elastic where his team is creating, maintaining, and supporting shared UX infrastructure.
LinkedIn

Dave Miller

He/Him
VP of Engineering @ Cord
Dave has 20+ years of experience and has been in IC, Manager, and Director roles at Facebook and Lyft. He is now the VP of Engineering at Cord.
LinkedIn

David Novati

He/Him
Principal Analyst @ Epic Games
David spoke to us about his experience breaking into the world of gaming and what’s it’s like to be part of such a fast-growing industry.
LinkedIn

Derek Darko

He/Him
Software Engineer @ Google
Derek has 3+ years of experience and has excelled on high-performing teams at Bank of America and, most recently, Google.
LinkedIn

Eric Ning

He/Him
Staff Software Engineer @ Brex
Eric has 9+ years of experience and has excelled on high-performing teams at Microsoft, Facebook, and Airbnb.
LinkedIn

Erica Law

She/Her
Founder and Recruiting Leader @ Springhouse Talent
Erica has more than 7 years of experience in technical recruiting at both large tech companies like Lyft and smaller start-ups. Most recently, Erica has founded her own talent agency.
LinkedIn

Frances Coronel

She/Her
Senior SWE @ Slack
Frances brings more than 6 years of experience to Formation as a Mentor. She has excelled on high-performing teams at Slack, Byteboard, and Accenture.
LinkedIn

Geeta Chaudhry

She/Her
Engineering Mindset Coach
Geeta is a former Google software engineer and Stanford lecturer. She now runs her own practice as an Engineering Mindset Coach.
LinkedIn

Gracielle Yan

She/Her
Human Resources Generalist @ Equilibrium Energy
Gracielle brings over 15 years of experience to her role as a Career Coach at Formation. She has spent the majority of her career at Teach for America and Meta, working in People & Talent Ops.
LinkedIn

Jackson Gabbard

He/Him
CTO @ Cord
Jackson spent 6+ years at Facebook, runs an engineering- focused youtube channel with 1M+ views, and acts as CTO of Cord.
LinkedIn

James O’Dwyer

He/Him
Sr. Software Engineer @ Kustomer
James has 6+ years of engineering experience and has shipped impactful products for Carta, Sprig, and Spotify.
LinkedIn

Jean Leconte

He/Him
Business Engineer @ Meta
Jean brings over 4 years of experience as an engineer at some of the industry’s top companies, like Snap, Adobe, Google, Amazon, and most recently, Meta. At Meta, he is working as a Business Engineer on AI Agents.
LinkedIn

Joe Grinstead

He/Him
ex-Staff Engineer
Previously a Staff Engineer at WhatsApp, Joe brings over 9 years of software engineering experience and is most recently the Co-Founder of SkyMass.
LinkedIn

Karen Hsu

She/Her
Senior Software Engineer @ Linkedin
Karen brings 9+ years of software engineering experience and excellence to mentoring at Formation. Most recently, she is at LinkedIn leading a 13 person frontend team through planning, execution, and testing.
LinkedIn

Kent Beck

He/Him
Creator of Extreme Programming
Kent is the proprietor of Three Rivers Consulting, Inc. where he’s spent 30+ years helping companies build out SWE teams. He also spent 7+ years as a Technical Coach at Facebook.
LinkedIn

Kevin Farst

He/Him
Senior iOS Engineer @ Earnin
Kevin has 14+ years of engineering experience and has shipped impactful products at Earnin and Stanza where he developed features using React and GraphQL.
LinkedIn

Keyan Pishdadian

He/Him
Software Engineer @ Stripe
Keyan has 7+ years of engineering experience building backend systems at companies like Lyft and Venmo. He now works on Money Movement systems at Stripe.
LinkedIn

Kirk Yokomizo

He/Him
Co-founder @ Lithium Technologies
Kirk discussed the engineering job hunt, what the recruiting process looks like for different stage companies, and strategies for targeting specific companies.
LinkedIn

Lovedeep Mittal

He/Him
Software Development Engineer @ Sigmoid
Lovedeep brings 5+ years of industry experience to mentoring at Formation, currently managing a team of 5+ engineers at Sigmoid. He’s passionate about education and mentoring.
LinkedIn

Marques Hill

He/Him
Technical Recruiter @ Landed
Marques brings 3+ years of SWE recruiting to Formation. He has recruited and built teams at Facebook, Zenefits, Cisco, Gem, and Greenhouse.
LinkedIn

Martin Murjas

He/Him
Software Dev. @ Bloomingdale’s
Martin is the sole web developer at Bloomingdale's. This gives him the unique opportunity to develop solutions that drive growth, sales, and efficiency.
LinkedIn

Michael Shao

He/Him
Senior Software Engineer @ Amazon
Michael has 8 years of experience building inclusive SWE teams with a focus on diversity, psychological safety, and carefully balancing the delineation between home and work life.
LinkedIn

Michell Brito

She/Her
Full-Stack Developer @ Adobe
Michell has 2+ years of software engineering experience. At Adobe, she’s working on features that allow creatives to get paid for their art.
LinkedIn

Mike Rognlien

He/Him
Chief Builder of Awesome People @ Multiple Hats Management
Mike is a founding member of Facebook's L&D team and an expert facilitator focusing on D&I and company culture.
LinkedIn

Mitali Gala

She/Her
Engineering Manager @ Coinbase
Mitali has over 8 years of experience and has excelled on high-performing teams at Nextdoor, Airtable, Coinbase and Front where she led the SF Android and iOS team.
LinkedIn

Mohy Saleh

He/Him
Software Engineer @ Google
Mohy has 4+ years of experience at Amazon and Google. At Google he has developed features for both Google Assistant and their speech recognition service.
LinkedIn

Muneeb Azam

He/Him
Senior Software Engineer @ Apple
Muneeb has 6 years of software engineering experience and brings expertise as a Formation Mentor. Most recently, Muneeb is a Senior SWE at Apple where he’s worked on modernizing Apple Maps Search & UI, impacting millions of iPhone users globally.
LinkedIn

Nam Nguyen

He/Him
Software Engineer @ Sudozi
Nam joined as a Fellow and is now a Mentor. At Sudozi, he led a budget tracking project and is currently working on integrating customers' accounting data through 3rd party APIs.
LinkedIn

Nathen Lee

He/Him
Technical Recruiter @ Google
Before joining Google, Nathan helped recruit and staff hospitals with nurses across the U.S. and Guam during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
LinkedIn

Nicholas Wong

He/Him
Software Engineer @ Meta
Nic brings his experience as a Formation Alumni to his role as a Mentor. He also has 3+ years of experience as a Software Engineer at companies like Digit, Cointracker, and Meta.
LinkedIn

Nook Harquail

He/Him
Staff Software Engineer II @ Etsy
Nook Harquail LinkedIn

Peter Royal

He/Him
Staff Software Engineer @ Netflix
Peter brings more than 25 years of experience to Formation, with 5+ years at Netflix. A highlight of his career was building a full U.S. equity trading system with a dream-team at DRW Trading.
LinkedIn

Philip Su

He/Him
Member of Technical Staff, OpenAI
Philip spent 12+ years at Microsoft and 7+ years at Facebook, where he led the London engineering office, before founding his own company, Audere.
LinkedIn

Rafa Moreno Cesar

He/Him
Software Engineer @ Clubhouse
Rafa brings 6+ years of experience working at Instacart, Dosh, Big Nerd Ranch.
LinkedIn

Rajagopal Bojanpalli

He/Him
Senior Software Engineer @ Uber
Rajagopal has 8+ years of engineering experience. He was the first data engineer in his org. and helped it grow to 10 engineers.
LinkedIn

Roby Singh

He/Him
Technical Recruiter @ Doordash
Roby brings over 9 years of technical recruiting experience and expertise as a Career Coach. He’s spent the majority of his time at DoorDash and Meta on their Early Careers teams.
LinkedIn

Ryan Mack

He/Him
Director Of Engineering @ Uptycs
Ryan has been programming since 2002, helped develop AI for Rockstar Games, and spent 10 years at Facebook where he founded their Boston Office.
LinkedIn

Shagun Bhatia

She/Her
Senior Software Engineer @ Cloudera
Shagun brings 7+ years of experience, most recently as a Senior SWE at Cloudera, optimizing tooling, infrastructure, and automating test workflows.
LinkedIn

Shekhar Venkat

He/Him
Head of Software Development @ Amazon
Shekhar joins Formation with 20+ years of experience, most recently as Amazon’s Head of Software Development for Alexa Healthcare, Device Certification, and Data Privacy & Trust. He’s also an Amazon Bar Raiser who recruited over 250 top talents.
LinkedIn

Shubham Sharma

He/Him
Software Engineer II
Shubham brings over 6 years of experience in software engineering, most recently at Microsoft on their Cloud + AI team.
LinkedIn

Sivcan Singh

He/Him
Staff Engineer @ Postman
Sivcan joins Formation with 7+ years of software engineering experience, most recently as a Staff Engineer. His roles as Product Engineer and Tech Lead allow him to offer diverse expertise to mentees.
LinkedIn

Sophia Vanegas

She/Her
University Recruiting Technical Sourcer @ NVIDIA
Sophia brings over 8 years of experience and expertise in technical sourcing to career coaching at Formation. Sophie has spent the majority of her time at Meta, and is most recently at NVIDIA.
LinkedIn

Stanley Ye

He/Him
Software Engineer II @ Microsoft
Stanley has 5+ years of experience and has excelled on high-performing teams at Amazon and most recently, Microsoft where he contributes to Edge.
LinkedIn

Steven Dang

He/Him
Senior Software Engineer @ Uber
Steven brings over 7 years of software engineering experience at Capital One and Uber where he specializes in building security infrastructure products.
LinkedIn

Suhas Joshi

He/Him
Engineering Manager @ Stripe
Suhas has 17+ years of experience. As an EM at Facebook, he simultaneously led multiple News Feed teams. He’s now at Stripe leading their work on Messaging and Design Systems.
LinkedIn

Sujit Nair

He/Him
Principal Engineer @ Marqeta
Sujit brings nearly 20 years of engineering experience where he excelled at Netflix, eBay, and Yahoo.
LinkedIn

Sunil Lalwani

He/Him
Senior Software Engineer @ Versa Networks
Sunil joins Formation with 7+ years of SWE experience. Currently a Senior Engineer at Versa Networks, he previously worked at Meta on ML infrastructure for the People You May Know feature.
LinkedIn

Tanuj Aswani

He/Him
SDE II @ Amazon
Tanuj brings 4+ years of engineering experience and his experience as a Fellow to Formation. Prior to Amazon, he worked on a team that was ingesting cancer data for treatment research.
LinkedIn

Tony Nguyen

He/Him
Senior SDE @ Oracle
Tony has over 11 years of engineering experience and has excelled on high-performing teams at Amazon and most recently Oracle, where he works on Autoscaling and Fleet Management.
LinkedIn

Udayan Deshpande

He/Him
SDE @ Icebrgio
Udayan has over 13 years of engineering experience and has excelled on high-performing teams at Microsoft, Zillow, and Amazon.
LinkedIn

Vincent Ng

He/Him
Senior QA Engineer @ Federal Reserve Bank of SF
Vincent has 15+ years of experience at Accenture, Allstate, Stride Health, and Skout.
LinkedIn

Vincent Nguyen

He/Him
Software Engineer @ TikTok
Vincent has 2 years of software engineering experience. He broke into the tech space by way of 3 different coding bootcamps and brings great insight into their pros and cons.
LinkedIn

Vinit Parikh

He/Him
Senior Software Engineer @ Uber
Vinit has 6+ years of experience. While at Meta, he worked on the interview overhaul process for his organization. Now at Uber Freight, he is building out the Less Than Truckload product.
LinkedIn

Vlad Shlosberg

He/Him
CEO @ Foqal
Vlad has 17+ years of engineering experience and worked as a Sr. Staff Engineer at LinkedIn before founding his own company, Foqal.
LinkedIn