Hi, I’m Mike, and I’m excited to share that I’m joining Juicebox as VP of Engineering.

I spent the last 13 years at X, including the last three and a half as Director of Engineering. During that time, I led teams across infrastructure, core services, and product, and helped grow an engineering organization of more than 50 engineers.

One of the most important parts of my job was hiring exceptional engineers. We had an incredibly high bar for talent, and I spent a lot of time trying to find people who could meet it.

That’s actually how I first discovered Juicebox.

Building conviction as a customer

At X, we were very particular about who we hired, but traditional sourcing tools were painful to use. I wanted something better, so I started searching on Google and came across Juicebox.

Within the first five minutes, I had my “aha” moment.

The product worked exactly the way I expected a sourcing tool to work. I could find people I was looking for, discover exceptional candidates I’d never come across before, and use AI-assisted outreach to cut out hours of busywork. Instead of spending my time writing emails, I could spend it talking to candidates.

And the results came almost immediately.

By the next day, candidates for some of our hardest-to-fill roles were already replying. The day after that, I turned on Juicebox Agents for our most critical roles, and my calendar started filling up with intro calls with exceptional talent.

I was genuinely blown away by how well it worked.

As an engineering leader, I know how difficult it is to hire great people. Experiencing that kind of impact firsthand made me realize just how much opportunity there was to improve the way companies find and hire talent.

The people behind the product

When I started thinking about my next chapter, Juicebox was the first company that came to mind. As a hiring manager, I already loved the product, and what I wanted to understand was the team and company behind it.

Throughout the process, I got to spend time getting to know David and Ishan, and those conversations made me even more excited about the opportunity. It was clear they were building something special, with an ambitious vision for where recruiting could go with AI.

I also loved the engineering team from the moment I met them. They are a group of exceptionally smart people with a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, and I was impressed by how much they were already building with a relatively small team.

Ishan has built an incredible technical foundation and product vision. I’m excited to work alongside him and help scale the engineering organization as Juicebox grows.

Building the engineering organization

I think this is the most exciting time to be in software engineering in decades.

AI is fundamentally changing how we build software. Small, AI-native teams can accomplish 10x what they could before, and I believe we’re still in the early days of figuring out what’s possible.

One of the things that drew me to Juicebox was the opportunity to build an engineering organization around that reality from the ground up. At many established companies, adopting AI means figuring out how to integrate it into existing processes and systems. At Juicebox, we have the opportunity to design those processes AI-first from the beginning.

My vision is to build a lean, incredibly fast engineering organization of exceptional builders who care deeply about the customer experience and take ownership of what they ship.

That also means being thoughtful about how we bring AI into the product itself.

Models are incredibly powerful, but that only matters when it’s useful to the people using them. For us, that means building AI that recruiters genuinely trust and love using. The product needs to deliver consistently great results, be fast and reliable, and give customers confidence that we’re handling their data responsibly.

My first priorities are scaling the engineering team and making sure our product can support a rapidly growing customer base without compromising reliability or the experience people already love.

We’ve got an incredible foundation to build on, and I’m excited about the opportunity to help take it to the next level.

Looking ahead

There’s a lot more to build, and we’re starting from a product our users already love. Ultimately, this work is about helping people connect in the real world: the right person in the right role. If you’re a recruiter or hiring manager using Juicebox, I’d love to hear what you want to see us build next.

And if you’re an engineer who wants to own hard problems and build AI-native products with a small, fast team, we’re hiring.