Kevin Rugg

  • Hands-on software development: 20+ years
  • Leadership/Management experience: 10+ years
    • Tech Lead of Tech Leads (15-80 devs), Tech Lead (5-20 devs), Manager (5-20 devs)
  • Currently taking some time off to work on personal projects and catch up on interesting technologies and tools that I haven't had a chance to play with. Possibly in 2026 I may be available if the right project comes along.

Recent Experience

Google

2010 - 2025
Staff Software Engineer
Java, Distributed Systems, System Design, Data Pipelines, SQL Databases, Spanner, Google AppEngine, REST APIs, Microservices, Data Structures and Algorithms, Performance Optimization, Agile Development, Building Teams, Mentoring, Clean Code and Quality, Testing, Security and Privacy, Tech Debt Management, Flutter, Accessibility, Data Regionalization
  • Google Classroom
    • Helped Classroom become net-profitable after usage and costs skyrocketed during the pandemic. Initially managed two teams focused on premium features, Plagerism Reports and Analytics. After growing the Analytics team by both an acquisition and aggressive hiring in Mexico City, shifted from managing back over to technical leadership and implementation.
    • Interesting aspects to these projects included extreme security and privacy consideration given Google's reputational risk handling under-18 data, the changing landscape and opportunities with the rise of capabilities of AI, and balancing revenue and sustainable growth with the core mission to provide useful functionality to teachers, education leaders, and students to improve education.
  • Corporate Engineering
    • Compensation, Performance Management, Applicant Tracking, Master Data Management
    • Developed storage solutions for internal data deemed too sensitive to be able to use Google's public Cloud solutions at that time. Worked closely with Google's Cloud SQL solution to make that a viable option for internal data needs.
    • Worked in Munich for a year helping grow that office, mentor new developers, and start projects that that site could continue to own.
    • Tech Lead for Compensation Planning and Benefits engineering teams (~20 devs). Expanded my scope to include helping grow technical leadership for Performance Management teams, Learning Platform teams, and then eventually coordinating and helping guide technical decisions across all the teams working on HR systems, ~170 devs, across five directors.
    • Since Google's Corporate Engineering (~2,000 devs) leaned more towards junior developers than the rest of Google, coordinated with a small group of other senior developers to build support for growing our technical talent, curating a list of recommended technologies and best practices. Taught internal classees on how to choose the right storage systems for new projects and how to successfully launch projects within Google.

Prior Experience

Python, Ruby, Javascript, Flash/Flex, Mobile Development, Amazon EC2, Hibernate, Apache, Tomcat, Oracle, EJB, XSLT, Smalltalk, C++, C#
FooMojo - Gaming (Java)
Winster - Gaming (Ruby, Flex/Flash)
Pivotal Labs / Google - Applicant Tracking Management, Ads (Java)
Velidom - Developer Tools (Java, C#)
Evant / Manhattan Associates - Retail Planning (Java)
Pacific Stock Exchange - Finance (Java)
CTP / Wyzdom Solutions / Dana Corporation - Asset Management (Java)
CTP / McKesson Pharmaceuticals - Pharmaceutical RFPs (Smalltalk)
Orient-Overseas Container Line - Shipping Logistics (Smalltalk)
ISSC, IBM - UI Components and Frameworks (C++)

Education

BS in Computer Science

Stanford University