Andy Rifken
Senior Engineering Manager
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyrifken/
Oakland, CA

👋 Hello! I’m an engineering manager focused on developer experience and developer productivity engineering. I’m also a life-long software developer and problem solver, and love to be hands-on with the team with the goal of growing the next generation of experts!

Senior Manager (Mobile Apps Platform) • Zillow Group

SF Bay Area (Remote) • October 2021 - Present

• Established Zillow Mobile App Platform team providing foundational architecture and CI/CD systems serving 150 iOS and Android developers at Zillow. Grew the team from 5 developers to 15, and split into dedicated iOS, Android, and infrastructure sub-teams.
  
• Hired, led, grew engineers and engineering managers across all skill and experience levels – from sophomore interns, to Principal engineers, to first-time engineering managers
  
• Architected our macOS CI/CD infrastructure (powering all iOS CI workloads) as well as our Android CI/CD infrastructure, and trained mobile software engineers on the team in AWS and DevOps engineering, growing them into experts in maintaining, operating, and improving the systems.
  
• Implemented communications and “customer empathy” programs such as newsletters, advisory board meetings, and developer surveys in order to steer our team’s OKRs and balance short-term and long-term priorities effectively.
  
• Designed and implemented company-wide mobile app engineering on-call process, reducing TTA and TTR from days to hours.
  
• Redesigned and implemented mobile app engineering hiring process to re-focus on practical skills and experience, improving onboarding time and reducing skills deficits on mobile development teams.
  
• Advised and collaborated with partner platform teams on delivery and observability strategies such as mobile app “self-healing” and vendor and cloud cost control.

Senior Manager (Mobile App Product Engineering) • Zillow Group

SF Bay Area (Remote) • April 2020 - October 2021

• Led a team of six iOS developers and one SDET.
  
• Led project team of web+apps+backend developers to migrate Trulia onto a new search platform and listing data pipeline to improve performance and comply with MLS requirements.
  
• Cross-trained mobile app engineers on backend engineering and GraphQL subgraph development and deployment so that our mobile developers could contribute to “the whole stack”
  
• Led cross-organizational team evaluating, building, and deploying CICD platform for iOS engineers.
  
• Coached and supported SDEs in successful achievement of career development objectives, including transition from IC to eng. manager, changes in primary discipline, and expansion of scope and influence beyond our team and organizational unit.

Principal iOS Engineer • Zillow Group

San Francisco, CA • October 2015 - April 2020

• Led multi-quarter initiative to refactor iOS monolith into independent reusable modules.
  
• Led phased rewrite of Trulia iOS in Swift, while minimizing risk and impact to product roadmaps.
  
• Led Trulia GraphQL working group to ensure consistency, quality, and performance across the schema and resolvers.
  
• Built and maintained CI/CD infrastructure, test+code coverage dashboards, and crash/error monitors for Trulia iOS team.
  
• Wrote and maintained onboarding tools and documentation for new contributors to Trulia iOS products.

iOS Technical Lead (Consultant) • CNBC

Englewood Cliffs, NJ • February 2015 - September 2015

• Architected and led delivery of several high visibility features within the CNBC iOS apps, including in-app live TV streaming and synchronized watch lists.
  
• Architected, built, and shipped CNBC’s Apple Watch app.
  
• Built in-house CI/CD platform with automated unit tests and code coverage reporting.
  
• Maintenance, debugging, code reviewing of CNBC Android app.

Senior Software Engineer • Shoutlet

Madison, WI • July 2013 - February 2015

• Developed and released native iOS and Android mobile apps that integrate with Shoutlet’s Social CRM platform.
  
• Technical lead for a delivery team, overseeing PHP/JS/CSS architecture, code quality, collaboration with service API teams and product development team.
  
• Built and deployed high availability realtime messaging platform for Shoutlet’s Customer Care offering.

Software Engineer • Time Inc

New York, NY • June 2010 - June 2013

• Built and delivered a suite of iOS apps for brands including Sports Illustrated, Time Magazine, PEOPLE, Real Simple, and more.

Education

BFA • School of Visual Arts New York, NY
Motion Graphics/Graphic Design Class of 2010

More about me!

I have been involved in the animal shelter/rescue world for over 10 years developing adoption and volunteer programs, serving as a board member, organizing fundraisers and events, and assisting with shelter dog enrichment and behavior work. I currently spend my weekends at Oakland Animal Services introducing shelter dogs to potential adopters! I also manage the “tech” (web and data applications for the shelter) – ask me about how we are using LLMs and agentic AI to reduce our shelter population and increase live outcomes!