# 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamwolff/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandromarcu/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/aljjenkins/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexreyes27/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexstaninger/) ### Allen Miao **He/Him** Software Engineer @ Nextdoor Allen has been on Nextdoor’s core iOS Engineering team for 3 years. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/allen-miao-78900b48/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvin-zablan-b73a92117/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/austen-mcdonald-8393566/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-gabriel/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayushjain-6013/) ### 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](/content/network/linkedin.com/in/benmuschol/index.html) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettdewoody/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianzhu1/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bronze-compere-395739a0) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryceoldham/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesstlouis/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherryhertz/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/chislaine-cruz/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/clintandrewhall/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-miller-162061151/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-novati-71b48821/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/derek-darko-a93b4a88/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-ning/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericalaw/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/francescoronel/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/geeta-chaudhry-a963411/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracielleyan/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacksongabbard/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesxodwyer/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jean-leconte-ii/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-grinstead/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenlohsu/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kentbeck/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-farst-14a63914/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/keyanp/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirk-yokomizo/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lovedeep-m-918859139/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marques-hill/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinmurjas/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mshao/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellbrito/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikerognlien/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitali-gala/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohysaleh/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/muneebazam/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/namdoannguyen/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathen-lee-recruiter303132/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/niczwong/) ### Nook Harquail **He/Him** Staff Software Engineer II @ Etsy [Nook Harquail LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/harquail/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterroyal/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/suphilip/) ### Rafa Moreno Cesar **He/Him** Software Engineer @ Clubhouse Rafa brings 6+ years of experience working at Instacart, Dosh, Big Nerd Ranch. [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/rafaelmorenocesar) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/brajagopal/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhupinder408/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanmackfb/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shagunbhatia/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shekhar-venkat/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shubhamsharma1996/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sivcan/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophia-vanegas-136b5591/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stanye/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dangsteven) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/suhasjoshi2/) ### Sujit Nair **He/Him** Principal Engineer @ Marqeta Sujit brings nearly 20 years of engineering experience where he excelled at Netflix, eBay, and Yahoo. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sujitnair/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunil-lalwani/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanuj-aswani/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-for-the-nguyen/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/udayandeshpande/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincentkng/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/vnguyencode/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/parikhvinit/) ### 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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/vshlos/)