John Gifford

Mountain View, CA · (408) 828-4186 · john@jrgifford.com · LinkedIn

Engineering Leader | Director of Engineering | Software Development Manager

Engineering leader with over a decade of experience building and scaling consumer and enterprise products. Proven record of growing high-performing teams, delivering cross-platform solutions, and aligning technical strategy with business outcomes. Experienced across mobile, backend, and AI/ML domains, while remaining hands-on to guide architecture and unblock teams.

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Experience

Director of Engineering | Principal Software Engineer | Software Engineer - Innit Inc.

Redwood City, CA · Feb 2017 - Aug 2025

• Directed cross-functional teams spanning Android, iOS, backend, and AI/ML, delivering food-retail and connected-kitchen products used by hundreds of thousands of consumers and B2B partners.
• Owned technical roadmaps and sprint execution, balancing delivery pressure with long-term scalability and architectural quality.
• Mentored engineers and established a consistent code review culture, introducing lightweight processes that improved collaboration and reduced review bottlenecks.
• Partnered with executives and product to integrate external APIs, payment systems, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation for semantic search, ensuring measurable business outcomes.
• Modernized CI/CD pipelines and release processes.
• Balanced hands-on coding with leadership, contributing directly to architecture, design reviews, and complex integrations.

Software Engineer - ShopWell Labs

San Carlos, CA · Jul 2015 - Feb 2017

• Lead developer for ShopWell Android consumer nutrition app, achieving over 100K downloads and strong engagement metrics.
• Delivered features including barcode scanning, nutrition scoring, and personalized recommendations.
• Collaborated closely with design and product, shaping a user experience that drove adoption and retention.

Software Engineer - YottaMark

Redwood City, CA · Oct 2013 - Jul 2015

• Developed enterprise iOS and Android apps for supply chain analytics, enabling farm-to-store traceability for major retailers.
• Implemented cloud sync, event logging, and compliance features supporting high-volume production environments.
• Maintained and enhanced legacy systems while contributing to new greenfield applications.

Selected Projects

Phil Mobile Apps - 2017 - 2025

Led Android and iOS development for a diabetes management app in France, averaging 4.5+ stars and 15K MAU. Coordinated product, clinical, and engineering teams to meet regulatory requirements.

ShopWell Nutrition App - 2015 - 2017

Built Android app features for dietary recommendations with barcode scanning and scoring. Android app achieved over 100K Play Store downloads and was part of the broader ShopWell platform, which reached over 2M users

Retail Insights App - 2013 - 2015

Contributed to enterprise food supply chain tracking, building robust sync and analytics pipelines adopted across major distributors.

Skills

Leadership & Management: Team building, career development, cross-functional collaboration, agile delivery, roadmap ownership, executive communication

Architecture & Systems: System design, API architecture, cloud platforms (AWS/GCP), CI/CD, data pipelines, security & compliance

Mobile & Backend: Android (Kotlin, Java, Jetpack Compose), iOS (Swift), REST APIs, Python, Node.js, TypeScript

Education

B.S. in Computer Science - University of California, Santa Cruz (2009-2013)