Summary
Michael Novak is a Senior Staff Software Engineer based in New York with over 15 years of experience building scalable, user-focused products and leading engineering teams across startups and large enterprises. He has a proven record of scaling teams and systems—from founding and running Backstretch, a Kubernetes-based stable management platform he built end-to-end, to managing a 40+ global engineering org at Microsoft that drove major Outlook-Samsung OEM integrations. Michael blends hands-on engineering (Node.js/TypeScript, React, PostgreSQL, Redis) with operational rigor—designing production/staging clones, automating release pipelines, and reducing crashes and costs through architecture improvements. He is equally comfortable shipping product features and owning infrastructure, having cut release toil and automated deployment processes that previously required hours of manual work weekly. Notably, his work earned a patent for a mobile email attachment/search interface, reflecting a habit of solving practical UX challenges at scale. Michael thrives at the intersection of product, people, and execution, bringing entrepreneurial grit and deep technical breadth to high-impact projects.
11 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer