Kah Seng Tay
Founder of Stealth Startup
Kah Seng Tay
Founder of Stealth Startup
Mountain View, California
Overview
Work Experience
Founder
2023 - Current
Starting something new
Advisor
2022
Perplexity is your AI research assistant. It has a conversational interface, contextual awareness and personalization to learn your interests and preferences over time.
Angel Investor / Mentor
2018
Focused on AI, platform SaaS, developer tooling, consumer, social networks Plato, Aimhub, Seam, Alt, MoonPay, Jasper, Rosebud, Coinshift, BuildSpace, Actual Chat, Pinwheel, MainStreet, Primer, Alpine, Reflex, Defog, CreatorML, Extend, Lutra, Landing, Radiant Ops, Aqua, Fume, Zep AI, Pump, CrowdVolt and others Also LP to several funds Angel Track & Mentor Track at First Round Capital, and Mentor on Plato
GM & VP of Engineering
2019 - 2023
Established the south bay office as well as the Platform engineering group. Served as interim head of engineering and launched new prod dev functions. Helped build up and lead the overall Infrastructure organization, including net new initiatives on dev velocity and internationalization.
VP of Engineering
2017 - 2019
Helping build the brain of self-driving cars. Acquired by Apple in June 2019. • First non-founder executive hired, pre-Series B, to lead multiple engineering teams reporting to the CEO • Responsible for software R&D and AI teams spanning perception, annotation, motion planning, controls, simulation, vehicle infrastructure, human-robotics interaction and mobile • Prior experience leading the platform, mapping, localization and data infrastructure teams • Recruited cross-functionally, growing the team by 5x, and improved product development & goal setting processes • Directed the next generation vehicle platform and driverless program efforts across multiple stakeholders • Key partner to Product, Business Development & Strategy, responsible for technical evaluation and decision of new deployments, led engineering development for the Frisco, TX and Arlington, TX launches
Director of Engineering
2011 - 2017
• Employee #17, engineer #10 • Built up the IT/security, infrastructure, search and advertising engineering teams from scratch • At the time of departure, directly responsible for all of monetization, search and UI engineering (~25 people), while overseeing technical direction and goals across all the product teams • Contributed heavily via recruiting initiatives to Quora's >10x headcount growth • Created and organized Quora's Bootcamp program for new hires, and optimized development processes across the company • Recognized as Quora's most senior director of engineering, mentored and managed several engineering managers
Member of Technical Staff, Software Engineering
2010 - 2011
• Social CRM team acquired through Etacts • Rewrote existing product/service from the ground up to work with Salesforce
Chief Technology Officer / Engineer
2010 - 2010
• Acquired by Salesforce.com. • Key member of the founding team, joining cofounders after YC W10. • Contributed to both the frontend and backend infrastructure at all levels of the stack for all 4 products (Javascript/Python/Tornado/Nginx/MySQL/Cassandra/Celery/RabbitMQ). • Created innovative multi-dimensional analytics graphing package that allowed for scalable low-cost implementation of many tracked metrics.
Co-Founder
2009 - 2010
• Incubated, built and launched non-profit social network for Singapore (Django/Python/MySQL/Java/Nginx/Redis) • Conceptualized and implemented many innovative features involving SMS, MMS, location, trending topics • Lead distributed team of 3 developers and 1 UI designer over 5 milestones over 4 geographic locations • Currently serving 38K members (1-2% of total market), 24K linked accounts, 18K phones, and 3MM "beats" monthly (500K by SMS) • Stopped active feature development in Aug 2010.
Software Development Engineer II
2008 - 2010
• Developed new and improving existing Windows Live Hotmail protocols (C#/.NET/T-SQL/Powershell) • Shipped 5 properties/codebases (including Exchange ActiveSync) from planning, design, implementation, release to production and maintenance • Created 4 innovative tools and test frameworks, adopted by many teams in the organization • Recognized as the SME for best code quality, testing, shipping across large codebases, mentoring • Active member of Technical Leadership Select 2010 class (shortlisted high-potentials) • Consistently achieved Exceeded / top 20% ratings for each review cycle, and Gold Star award in 2009