MK

Martin Kristiansen

Founder of Ajour Software

Seal Beach, California

Overview 

Martin Kristiansen is a seasoned engineering and product leader currently serving as the Founder of Ajour Software. With a strong background at reputable companies like Twitch, NerdWallet, and TigerConnect, he has excelled in roles such as Director of Video Intelligence at Twitch and Software Engineering Manager at NerdWallet. His experience spans across various sectors, including messaging, developer tools, data services, analytics, and AI, showcasing his expertise in software development and scalability.

Work Experience 

  • Founder

    2022 - Current

    (building in stealth mode)

  • VP of Engineering

    2021 - 2022

  • Director, Video Intelligence, AWS IVS/Twitch Video

    2019 - 2021

    Responsible for answering "what if?" and "why?" inside the Twitch video organization by building and managing: - The Applied Science Team: Creating models for realtime decision making, optimization, as well as forecasting, - The Data Engineering team: Building and maintaining data infrastructure, and data pipelines, - The Data Analytics: Supporting the product and business teams in making data-driven decisions with confidence.

  • Senior Engineering Manager, Video Distribution

    2019 - 2019

    - Manages the video mapping and video networking teams enabling Twitch's global video load balancing system. - Manages the ViewBot detection team, responsible for detecting non human viewers of Twitch video.

Twitch is a social video platform where gamers can broadcast, watch, and talk about video games.

Raised $35,000,000.00 from Thrive Capital, Nelstone Ventures, Take-Two Interactive Software, WestSummit Capital, Alsop Louie Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners.

  • Software Engineering Manager

    2017 - 2018

    I managed the team responsible for powering personalized user experiences, this involved participating in designing a federated data layer, and enabling my own team, as well as other teams in the organization to leverage this system. This enabled faster iteration, and empowered the rest of the organization to move faster by decoupling teams and enabling teams to move independently. My main focus was growing the skills and careers of my direct reports by making sure their projects were highly aligned with long term company priorities.

  • Principal Software Engineer

    2017 - 2018

NerdWallet develops a financial platform to help people find the right credit cards and mortgage rates.

Raised $105,000,000.00 from Raison Wealth, Employee Stock Option Fund and MAK Ventures.

  • Staff Engineer

    2016 - 2017

Vungle transforms how people discover and experience apps that delivers the highest value users through engaging video ads.

Raised $25,500,000.00 from Seven Peaks Ventures, AngelPad, Crosslink Capital, Google Ventures, Aol Ventures, Webb Investment Network, Thomvest Ventures and Uncork Capital.

  • Principal Architect

    2013 - 2016

    * Principal Architect (2016 - present) * Director of Platform Infrastructure (2015 - 2016) * Erlang Engineer and API Development Lead (2013 - 2015): Continuous development of XMPP based services, NoSQL backend, optimizations for large, highly scalable distributed systems.

  • Director of Platform Infrastructure

    2015 - 2016

  • Erlang Engineer and API Development Lead

    2013 - 2015

    Continuous development of XMPP based services, NoSQL backend, optimizations for large, highly scalable distributed systems.

  • Programmer

    2008 - 2010

    Programmer on http://www.aarhusbylight.dk/index.html Lead programmer on MejlbyStenen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdaT3TDbmSA

  • Software Engineer

    2009 - 2009

    GPGPU programming mainly C++ and nVIDIA CUDA based analytics tools

  • Programmer

    2008 - 2009

Articles About Martin

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