Michael Continues

Engineer | Leader
linkedin.com/in/mikestopcontinues
20 years designing and scaling production systems in fast-moving environments. Deep expertise in distributed systems, API design, and platform infra, with strong product instincts and a high bar for developer experience. Happiest driving hard, ambiguous problems end-to-end.

Skills

Leadership
System architecture, technical strategy, API design, distributed systems, cross-org technical leadership, developer experience, product development
Languages
TypeScript, Go, Rust, Python, PHP, SQL
Backend & Infra
Distributed systems, Docker, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, Redis, data pipelines, security, compliance, AWS (CDK), GCP, Azure, Cloudflare
AI & Data
PyTorch, TensorFlow, LangChain, RAG, vector databases, embedding pipelines, prompt engineering, AI agents, Pandas, NumPy, Jupyter
Frontend
React (Next.js, Remix), Svelte, SolidJS, Astro, Tailwind, GraphQL

Work

Senior Staff Software Engineer

Meta

Sep 2024 - Current
  • Led development of Threads Youth Protection from zero to hundreds of millions of users, serving as architect across workstreams spanning dozens of engineers and hundreds of contributors.
  • Re-architected Meta's cross-app youth compliance platform and personally delivered cornerstone refactor, reducing the cost of launching new apps and meeting new regulatory requirements by 10x across Instagram, Facebook, Threads, WhatsApp, and Horizon.
  • Navigated compliance with dozens of emerging global regulations, balancing engineering efficiency, user experience, and hundreds of billions in potential fines.
  • Drove AI-native development, pioneering workflows and AI-driven systems that achieved a 5–10x reduction in costs for new projects.

Founder

BrowserCat

Dec 2023 - Current
  • Built best-in-class headless browser platform on the thesis that AI agents would need programmatic web access and data scraping would become more competitive, scaled the product, and exited at a 10x multiple.
  • Enabled instant-start, globally-scaled browser automation for developers and AI agents through an edge-deployed architecture with <50ms cold starts, persistent websocket connections, and multi-tenant security sandboxing.
  • Designed and shipped the entire platform solo, from initial architecture through launch and long-term operation.

Senior Staff Software Engineer

MongoDB

Jul 2022 - Nov 2023
  • Architected the company's AI gateway (embedding pipeline, security layer, data scrubbing, and error handling), cutting new GenAI project timelines by months and becoming the foundation for 24+ internal AI projects.
  • Designed and built a multi-user, multi-modal GPT-4 Slackbot with context-aware retrieval and user-scoped data access. 1k+ daily interactions, ~6 hours/week saved per surveyed employee.
  • Built a modern integrations platform, dataset API gateway, and reusable SDKs that cut new integration timelines in half and reduced external platform dependencies.
  • Designed an internal deployment platform centralizing secrets, cron jobs, logs, errors, and scaling, directly improving engineering velocity across the org.
  • Provided technical leadership across three teams (14 engineers), driving architecture decisions, generative AI adoption, and platform reliability company-wide.

Founder

SiteArcade

Jan 2020 - Jun 2022
  • Reduce website creation time from weeks to minutes with smart sync engine, AI-powered design, and forward-looking UX, ensuring websites stayed up-to-date automatically with new products, promotions, and events.
  • Deployed event-based serverless architecture, trained neutral nets, and implemented stack-wide best-practices.

Principal Software Engineer

GLG Insights

Aug 2018 - Dec 2019
  • Pioneered company-wide ML initiative and drove adoption across the tech org with convenient GUIs/APIs for managing A/B tests, multi-armed bandits, and collaborative filtering.
  • Reduced churn by 50%, increased paid event attendance by 20%, increased CRM profile completeness by 30%, and optimized click-through across our website.
  • Unlocked radical new business opportunities by re-engineering our compliance engine from over a minute/request to under a second, then by architecting realtime sync between our database, Salesforce, and our communication apps.
  • Led both engineering and product channels, facilitating the development of my team and the org through mentorship, targeted projects, and a coding book club.

Founder

AlephPost

Feb 2017 - Jul 2018
  • Launched innovative news portal to reduce misinformation and bias by providing high-level insight into trending topics, leveraging clustering techniques, NLP, and realtime analysis.
  • Upgraded users’ social media feeds with a browser extension that injected contextual data alongside shared links.

Principal Software Engineer

The Huffington Post / AOL

Sep 2014 - Jan 2017
  • Managed full product lifecycle for a dozen apps, from the pitch through design, development, and adoption, serving as the point-of-contact with stakeholders, users, and teams across the org.
  • Led multiple teams simultaneously, growing devs’ tech prowess and soft-skills by providing them with ample opportunities to explore interests in alignment with company goals.
  • Pioneered data-driven decision-making across the company, empowering staff with smart suggestions, interactive data, testing tools, a custom report builder, as well as leading workshops on how to optimize our content pipeline.
  • 10x’d curated ad views, doubled time-on-site for tentpole content, saved 60 hours/month of data analyst time, and optimized social ad spend with a suite of tools serving our sales and promotion teams.
  • Led the re-architecture of our data pipeline from client to cold-storage, ending data outages and erroneous data. Helped AOL adopt our work across all their brand sites.

Senior Software Engineer

New York University

Aug 2013 - Aug 2014
  • Accelerated research by creating an open-source platform for data sharing, management, and archival in compliance with NIH and NHS guidelines, serving hundreds of scientists world-wide.
  • Created in-browser multi-track video editor and data tagging tool with emerging video, audio, and canvas DOM APIs.
  • Led product development and user research. Streamlined onboarding flow, tripling user activation and data uploads.

Software Engineer

Freelance Development

Jan 2007 - Jul 2013
  • Built websites, e-commerce stores, and product MVPs for dozens of clients in PHP and Python, while self-studying software engineering fundamentals.