# Michael Parker > Software Engineer at Square Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/michaelparker I'm a principal software engineer and tech lead for payouts at Square, ensuring that $XXX billions of dollars are paid out to millions of sellers worldwide in an accurate and timely manner. Before joining Square, I was a developer and then manager on the core services team at Airbnb. And before that, I wrote software at Google, Khan Academy, and Burner. I have over 15 years professional experience in software engineering, with a focus on backend and infrastructure. ## Work Experience ### Principal Software Engineer @ Square Jan 2018 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area I’m a tech lead for payouts at Square. After a seller makes a sale, our team ensures that their money is deposited into their bank account in an accurate and timely manner. Every year, we are responsible for paying out over $XXX billion dollars to millions of sellers across the world, including sellers in the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, and Japan. We also ensure that each seller’s money can be moved near-instantly to other internal balances for spending, such as Square checking and savings accounts. In this capacity I lead a team of 8, and provide guidance to a broader banking infrastructure team of almost 40. In my tenure at Square, I have led or assisted with multiple initiatives to improve the reliability of payouts, increasing its availability to 99.999 in 2022. I have also led or assisted with the development of many features that provide more sophisticated accounting of funds, and faster and easier access to money belonging to sellers. Since starting at Square, I am the #2 committer to the Java repository by lines of code, and #3 by number of commits. ### Engineering Manager, Core Services @ Airbnb Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area • Managing a team of 8 developers who develop services providing data access and business logic for core data models in the Homes business, including listing, review, and user data. • Working with product teams "up the stack" in the Homes business. Ensure that our services scale the Homes business and power the big bets from product. • Working with infrastructure teams "down the stack" including the storage, observability, and data infrastructure teams. Ensure that these teams deliver impactful, high-quality solutions for all of engineering. • Recruiting and improving the processes for working with both product and infrastructure. ### Software Engineer, Core Services @ Airbnb Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco Bay Area • Through February 2017, led development of the listing data service, scaling it to become the highest QPS service at Airbnb. Took ownership of data and business logic previously owned by our monolithic Rails app. • Through June 2017, led development of the reviews data service, again migrating ownership from our Monolithic rails app. • Strong technical leadership, such as documenting best practices established by the team, giving multiple accompanying presentations to engineering, and one-on-one mentorship to junior engineers. ### Software Engineer, Mobile @ Khan Academy Jan 2014 – Jan 2016 | Mountain View, CA • Developed key infrastructure of the Khan Academy Android app with over 10,000,000+ installs. Included the networking layer, offline video/content manager, article renderer, and primary data models. • Developed parts of the Khan Academy iOS app through which learners submitted over 50,000,000 problem attempts in 2015. Implemented the native video player, infrastructure for representing and loading exercises, the harness for rendering these exercises, and productionized the handwriting recognition widget. • Reviewed code by colleagues, mentored three interns, and promoted documentation internally. ### Lead Developer, Burner @ Burner (Ad Hoc Labs) Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Los Angeles, CA • Modernized and productionized the backend, increasing its test coverage from 0 to over 90%. • Developed Burner for Android. It has over 1 million installs, and Ars Technica, Lifehacker, and Gizmodo covered its release. • Open sourced Iron Cushion, a CouchDB benchmark and load test. • Developed anti-DoS measures, an abuse monitor, and a real-time stats dashboard using Redis. • Complete handling of on-call duties and server administration. ### Co-Founder @ ReadyUp! Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | Santa Monica, CA • Performed usability tests with a dozen people and incorporated feedback into product design. • Designed the end-to-end architecture and wire protocol between the iPhone client, frontend, and backend. • Developed the iPhone application, including the SQL storage layer and the real-time, long-polling network layer. • Wrote and open sourced Pike, a message-level RPC library atop the I/O loop from the Tornado web server. ### Software Engineer, Search Quality & Google Docs @ Google Jan 2006 – Jan 2011 | Santa Monica, CA Google Search Appliance Search Quality • Open sourced Side-by-Side for Enterprise, a tool for evaluating scoring policies or ranking functions by comparing their results side-by-side. • Designed and implemented alternative implementations of the Google spelling corrector's data structures and combined all spelling processes into one, thereby reducing memory usage by over 60%. • Rewrote the spelling pipeline, or the process by which the GSA learns new words that are not part of its standard dictionary, to eliminate many embarrassing anomalies. • Improved maintainability and increased test coverage of code adopted from the "Google 1.0" era. Google Docs Backend • Implemented sharing in Google Docs where only users with a private key can access an item. • Pager duty and production work, including migrating all data in Google Docs to a new data center. Other • 8x Peer Bonus recipient. • Interviewed over 175 candidates. • Co-organized the "Noogler intergrouplet" that helped onboard new-hires in Santa Monica. ### VP of Technology @ Project:Possibility Jan 2008 – Jan 2011 • Sourced and helped implement software solutions to improve the lives of people with disabilities. • Mentored hundreds of college students at UCLA, USC, and CSUN writing software to improve the lives of the physically disabled. ## Education ### MS in Computer Science UCLA ### BS (with honors) in Computer Science and Engineering UCLA ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/omgitsmichaelgparker - Portfolio: http://www.omgitsmgp.com/ - GitHub: https://github.com/mgp --- Source: https://flows.cv/michaelparker JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/michaelparker/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-12