Mike Burton

Engineering Manager at Google

San Francisco, California, United States

About

I'm an engineering leader and a mobile engineering expert. My passion is building great ideas with smart people, and delivering thought-leading, massive scale apps that impact millions of people. I enjoy working on things that customers love, value, and use everyday. The Groupon mobile apps pull in more than half of Groupon's purchases and billions in annual bookings. They have received Best of 2014 awards from Apple and Google, Best Internet Retailer Award of 2015 for Groupon's Mobile app, and were listed as Forrester Research's top app for "Who Does Mobile Commerce Well?" in November 2014. The apps have a 4.5 star rating and are Top 5 in their app store categories. Prior to coming to Groupon, I also built the Digg, TripIt, and OpenTable apps. I'm in the top 10% of contributors for the Android and Java tags on Stack Overflow. I've flown a project on the Space Shuttle. I'm the author of Android App Development for Dummies. I've ridden my motorcycle from Alaska to Mexico, and I believe in taking calculated risks while being biased toward action. I'm passionate about executing on technical, cultural/organization, and product forming challenges. I've been at Groupon for an amazing several years, where I am the Director of Mobile Engineering leading a team of about 50 developers across distributed locations. I care a lot about the culture and spirit of my teams and want them to be able to change the world, and I believe that great leadership means sometimes nurturing disruption within your own team. I've witnessed the value of community and giving back. I've spoken on Android development at conferences in London, Boston, Silicon Valley, Rio and Romania. You may be interested in RoboGuice, my open-sourced Android framework used by Starbucks, Nike, Microsoft, and thousands of others.

Experience

  • Google (10 yrs 4 mos)
    • Engineering Manager, Google Wallet
      Oct 2019 - Present · 6 yrs 10 mos

    • Engineering Manager, Serverless EngProd
      Apr 2018 - Oct 2019 · 1 yr 7 mos

    • Engineering Manager – Hire, a recruiting app for G Suite
      Apr 2016 - Apr 2018 · 2 yrs 1 mo

      I manage the engineering team building Hire. Hire brings the power of Google to recruiting. Hire is an easy-to-use recruiting application to help teams at small to medium business distribute jobs, identify and attract candidates, build strong relationships, and efficiently manage the interview process – using familiar Google solutions such as Google Search, Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sheets and Hangouts.

  • Groupon (8 yrs 1 mo)
    • Director of Mobile Engineering
      2014 - 2016 · 2 yrs

      I lead Mobile Engineering at Groupon, where I'm responsible for all aspects of building Groupon's native mobile apps. Some of my recent accomplishments include: * Best of 2014 awards from Apple and Google, Best Internet Retailer Award of 2015 for Groupon's Mobile app, and Forrester Research's top app for "Who Does Mobile Commerce Well?" in November 2014. The apps have a 4.5 star rating and are Top 5 in their app store categories. * Built the case for and then doubled the mobile engineering team to more than 60 developers * Conceived and implemented Groupon's first engineering-wide continuing education program, with the intent to train web developers in mobile engineering. * Cut our engineering release cycles from 8 weeks to 3, with plans to go to two in Q2. * Transformed mobile development from a single monolithic team to multiple federated teams throughout Groupon * Engaged with engineering leaders from Facebook, Uber, and other companies to bring best practices to Groupon. * Initiated a complete rewrite of the apps in react native. Got team and executive buy-in. This effort was showcased by the CTO/CPO as one of Groupon Engineering's most important initiatives of 2016.

    • Android Engineering Manager
      2010 - 2014 · 4 yrs

    • Lead Android Developer
      2008 - 2012 · 4 yrs

      Acquired by Groupon

  • Director of Applications at Tiny Pictures
    2007 - 2008 · 1 yr

  • Sr. Software Developer at CarrierIQ
    2005 - 2007 · 2 yrs

  • Senior Research & Development Manager at VMware
    2004 - 2005 · 1 yr

    Manager Non-Interactive Devices (VMware Hosted Solutions)