# Michael Lese

> Senior Software Engineer

Location: San Francisco, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/michaellese

Swiss army knife (my old manager's words) of a backend engineer who's built and scaled multiple distributed systems and petabyte-scale data platforms supporting 30+ million daily active users. 

Fresh off a 3,788½ mile solo bicycle tour from Brooklyn to SF (DM for pics). A testament to my (terminally offline) project management skills…though Perplexity helped me prune my decision tree while planning the tour. Looking for something equally stimulating in tech (tough act to follow). 

I joined Grammarly because of how effectively the product tore apart my history thesis during a product demo. I spent 7½ years there, growing from a new grad to a subject matter expert, turning open-ended specs into scalable infrastructure. 

Largely worked in Scala, Python, and Java. Used Apache Spark and did a lot of CI and DevOps work with AWS while building petabyte-scale data platforms. Itching to add some new things to this list at my next role.

Led critical projects including full-stack migrations, developer toolkit creation, and query optimization that resulted in significant annual cost savings. I like a low-effort, high-reward easy win. 

Relentless, persistent iterative builder who loves improving code quality, documentation, and system reliability. I.e., spinning up MVPs out of nothing, and bringing MVPs to maturity. To quote an old version of my resume: "Think of the new hires!" 

I've been told I seem “everywhere” — herding cats, onboarding devs, talking to stakeholders, and troubleshooting in support channels. As a prolific technical interviewer, senior hires have cited my interviews as significant in their decision to join Grammarly.

## Work Experience
### Senior Software Engineer @ Together AI
Jan 2025 – Present | San Francisco, California, United States

### Software Engineer @ Grammarly
Jan 2016 – Jan 2024 | San Francisco
Scaled and optimized Grammarly's petabyte-scale data platform, supporting 30+ million daily active users. 

Key achievements: 

• Led two-year migration to Databricks, addressing critical scaling bottlenecks and improving data infrastructure. 

• Developed self-service developer toolkit, enabling partner teams to onboard and deploy within a day. 

• Reduced query costs by up to 300% and halved average query execution time. 

• Built structured-streaming suite processing 1+ billion daily events for data normalization and merging. 

• Saved $700,000+ annually through strategic query optimizations. 

• Decreased on-call alerts by 4x through multithreading and load balancing improvements. 

• Collaborated with hundreds of stakeholders on high-touch migrations. 

• Mentored team members and contributed to senior-level hiring decisions.

### Computer Science Tutor @ Colgate University
Jan 2014 – Jan 2016 | Hamilton, New York
Tutored in labs, ran solo office hours, recommended for one-on-one remedial tutoring sessions through Office of University Studies, awarded for service to the department

### Software Engineering Intern @ IBM
Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 | Yorktown Heights, New York
Built a virtual machine-hosting application to allow experiment-sharing within a research consortium.


## Education
### Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science
Colgate University


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/michael-lese-064abb8a

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Source: https://flows.cv/michaellese
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/michaellese/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-01