April 6, 2021 by Jason Sleight, Dean Thompson and Maria Christoforaki

Talk Summary: Technical Career Storylines is an internal interview series that strives to provide inspirational and motivational stories from senior engineers around Yelp Engineering. They discuss their reflections on notable milestones throughout their career to assist developing engineers contextualize engineering career progression. We know every career will be unique and filled with its own highs and lows, challenges and accomplishments; so as a result this series doesn't aim to provide an exact recipe for success, instead, relatable examples on how other's have approached their career. At this event, we'll host a panel with three of the Group Tech Leads at Yelp and discuss the core element of their career thus far.

Speaker: Dean Thompson

Dean joined Yelp in 2017 through its acquisition of a startup, Nowait, where he was CTO. Now he is the overall technical lead for Yelp's internal data and analytics platform. Dean has started or joined many other Pittsburgh-based startups over the years, including Transarc (acquired by IBM) and mSpoke (acquired by LinkedIn). He has remained in the Pittsburgh area, so he did extensive remote work long before it was cool.

Speaker: Jason Sleight

Dr. Jason Sleight is currently a group tech lead on the Core ML team at Yelp where he focuses on the intersection of machine learning (ML) and systems engineering. He leads several initiatives to create platforms for ad hoc computing, data ETL, and ML as well as to collaborate with stakeholders across all of Yelp to apply these platforms towards Yelp’s business goals. Prior to Yelp, Jason completed his PhD from the University of Michigan studying artificial intelligence and cooperative multiagent systems.

Speaker: Maria Christoforaki

Maria is a group tech lead in the Content group at Yelp. She is leading the group’s technical direction in building new data products and insights using business information, such as reviews and photos, and developing platforms that generate and serve these data products at scale. She has been with Yelp since 2014 and has worked on different areas, always with a focus on data.

Moderator: Alex Phillips

Alex has been at Yelp for just over 6 years. She joined as a Backend Engineer and is now an Engineering Manager for the Ad Product group who are responsible for building valuable advertising capabilities in the suite of advertising products Yelp offers. In her spare time, she loves to travel (rest assured, not during the pandemic) and play video games (lots of this during the pandemic).

About Yelping From Home:

Yelp’s mission is to connect people with great local businesses, and two of the teams working behind the scenes to make that happen are our five star engineering and product teams.

Playing an active role in our community is a value that we have strongly prioritized over the years. Typically we would invite you to come to Yelp’s HQ to network, grab a slice of ‘za, and learn about the technology and culture behind Yelp. With stay-at-home orders across the globe, Yelp (like many of you) has had no choice but to adapt to these changes. We understand that this is a strange and challenging time for many, so we’d like to invite you to join us as we navigate this new normal for the tech community together.

To stay connected, create space for folks to collaborate and share some of the things Yelp has been working on, we are launching our very own virtual tech talk series. This series of talks will feature Yelpers from engineering and product and will focus on themes such as career development, technical skills, workplace challenges and Yelp’s response to COVID-19.