Krystian Cybulski

Krystian has been building, scaling, and improving systems and teams for over 20 years. He has experience both as an engineer and as an engineering leader. Having lived both in the United States, Germany, and Poland, he understands the broad and nuanced cultural differences and has experience navigating through them. A proponent of remote work, he sees the benefits and has experience with mitigating its downsides. He is both an advisor and an implementor. In short, he has varied perspectives and experience that you can draw on to solve your problems and pave the way forward.

Experience

2021 - 2022

Career Karma (YC W19)

San Francisco, CA - remote

Scaled and matured the engineering department at a fast-growing series-B startup. Tripled the team; built out an organizational structure for scale; implemented hiring, onboarding, and competency review processes to ensure long term team health; developed a systems metrics framework and process of using them for driving improvement and spotting issues; led a team in Ukraine through the first year of war; navigated a market downturn.

2011 - 2021

15Five Inc.

San Francisco, CA - remote

My decade-long tenure at 15Five started as "employee #1" and ended with leading the engineering department. During this time, 15Five grew from 1 to 300+ people, raised multiple funding rounds, defined a new market category, and became one of the leading players in the employee performance management space. I've built a large portion of the initial product, shaped the technical direction by making, and later overseeing, strategic technical decisions.

In the department leadership role, working alongside the CTO, led the engineering team of 50+. Was responsible for development, DevOps, and QA teams, and focused on allowing them to work well together. Implemented, oversaw, and managed the system and people performance metrics, and used them to regularly draw insights and support strategic decisions. Participated in the due diligence for the acquisition of an employee engagement company, and led the integration of the technical platforms. Working with the senior leadership team, made sure the engineering department's goals aligned with and supported the wider and longer-term company strategy.

2008 - 2010

BidRodeo

Jersey City, NJ - hybrid

Founded BidRodeo, which was one of the top five pay-per-bid auction companies in 2010. Built the site and the bidding system, and operated the company through the exploding early days of this market. Scaled the platform to keep up with the growing demand, maintaining the lowest latency among competition. Kept the site secure from continued attacks by employing a mix of best practices and custom defenses. Brought the company to profitability and sold it to private investors.

2007 - 2010

Knight Capital Group

Jersey City, NJ

As a software engineer, maintained and built out the backend allocations and reporting system for Knight Direct, an institutional multi-market, multi-asset class execution management system. Developed robust, scalable, low-latency systems for handling high-volume concurrent transaction load.

2005 - 2007

NYC Corp., acquired by B/E Aerospace

Paramus, NJ

Performed enterprise-wide business analysis and software development. Worked with executive-level leadership on pricing and product performance data analysis. Developed reporting tools for assessing short-term trends within the company. Worked on team that launched a subsidiary in Poland.

2000 - 2005

BlueTie Inc.

Rochester, NY

As the lead software engineer at a dot-com startup, developed a solution-provider level web-based application suite that includes email, calendar, contact management, instant messaging system, and secure document transfer application.