Chris Schmich is a seasoned engineering leader and two-time startup co-founder with 14 years of software experience building products across mobile, web, and desktop platforms. As CTO of Formulate and now Formulate Robotics in the Bay Area, he combines hands-on engineering with product-driven leadership to turn prototypes into production-ready systems on tight timelines. His background includes shipping developer tools at Microsoft (contributing to multiple Visual Studio releases and patent filings) and building automated Android testing infrastructure and cloud services at Skyforge. A pragmatic full-stack engineer, he frequently contributes open-source UI work—examples include improving the front-end and UX of Instascan (an HTML5 webcam QR scanner) and evolving the Marinara Pomodoro Chrome extension. He favors strong teams and customer-focused solutions, often stepping into both product and technical roles to close the loop from idea to delivery. Based in Sunnyvale, he blends enterprise-grade engineering rigor with startup agility and a proven track record of shipping under deadline.
13 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
Parkway South High School
BS Computer Science, BS Computer Science at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Contributions:3 releases, 116 commits, 1 PR in 10 months
Contributions summary:Chris primarily contributed to the front-end development of the Instascan project. They implemented and refined the UI, including adding settings, a scan history display, and the functionality for copying and opening links. They also enhanced the user experience by adding features like sound and image capture to scan results. Furthermore, the user has added transform capabilities, using Javascript's String.replace and regular expressions.
Contributions:32 releases, 568 commits, 128 PRs in 6 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Chris primarily focused on implementing the core functionality and UI of the Pomodoro assistant Chrome extension. They added new features and user interface elements across multiple files, including the background script and the expiration page. They also implemented HTML5 doctype, improved dialog positioning, and added options for desktop and new tab notifications to enhance the user experience and functionality of the extension. The user also refactored timer functionality to use newer web APIs.
browserpomodoroproductivityassistantjstree
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Chris Schmich - Co-founder, CTO at Formulate Robotics