Daniel Rizea

Maker @ Luffu

About

As a child, I loved building LEGOs. This passion eventually morphed into making great products and building high-performing tech organizations. My 15+ years of experience in early-stage startups and big tech companies has helped me see a company's various stages of growth and what is required to succeed at each level. I started from my first job as a junior engineer to managing large organizations and building remote offices as a Tech Executive. I had a blast in the wearables, health, wellness, and fitness industries during this time. I love giving back to the ecosystem as much as possible by mentoring and advising startups and startup programs as much as possible. I also try to contribute my 2 cents to the body of knowledge through writing from my experience about leadership, tech, startups, management, and career growth on Business Insider and Medium. If you find my writing valuable, follow me for more updates.

Country

Romania

City

Bucharest

Industry

Computer Software

Skill

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Coaching, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Organizational Leadership, Change Management, Technical Leadership, Business Strategy, Technical strategy, Hiring, Distributed Team Management, Team Management, Android, Android Development, C, Linux, Distributed Systems, Java, Mobile Applications, Java Enterprise Edition, Web Applications

Experience

Maker

Luffu

2024-9 - Present · 2 yrs 1 mo

Bucharest, Romania

Building an intelligent family care system, starting with software and expanding into hardware, to help families stay healthy, safe, and connected.

Director of Software Engineering

Google

2022-11 - 2024-11 · 2 yrs 1 mo

Bucharest, Romania

Google Executive managing high performing organizations with teams in London. Bucharest and Mountain View offices.

Senior Engineering Manager

Google

2021-2 - 2022-11 · 1 yr 10 mos

Bucharest, Romania

Joining Google as part of the Fitbit acquisition. Managed critical integrations and contributed to technology and business strategy for the Fitbit Business Unit inside Google. Managed multiple engineering teams from both Google London and Bucharest sites.

Advisor

StartGDPR

2019-10 - 2024-8 · 4 yrs 11 mos

Romania

Advisor at an early stage startup that enables small and medium companies to be GDPR compliant in an online, smart and efficient way. Areas: business model & strategy, strategic vision and positioning, technology & AI

Director Software Engineering

Fitbit (now part of Google)

2018-3 - 2021-2 · 3 yrs

Leading the Consumer Services and Content portfolio from the Bucharest office. - launching Fitbit in a new market: the Family space with the Ace project. - launching the Premium subscription service, taking Fitbit to a software subscription model. Managing 7 teams with 90+ engineers from the Bucharest and Hong Kong offices that deliver the next generation of features, platforms, and wearables for the Fitbit ecosystem. Grew the Bucharest office from a couple of engineers to around 300. - Hiring and retaining talent. Mentoring senior engineers and managers and supporting them to get to the next level. - Technically involved and proficient in mobile and cloud development, including architectures and strategies. - Providing Technical leadership and technical strategy that complements the business and product strategy - Leading Mobile strategy program and initiatives in Fitbit.

Sr. Software Development Manager

Fitbit (now part of Google)

2017-9 - 2018-3 · 7 mos

Bucharest

Software Development Manager

Fitbit (now part of Google)

2017-1 - 2017-9 · 9 mos

Bucharest, Romania

Head of Software Development

Vector Watch

2016-1 - 2016-12 · 1 yr

Leading 5 teams: 1 Embedded OS team, 3 Mobile teams (iOS, Android, WP) with a Mobile Development Manager and 1 Cloud team. Responsible with recruiting and retaining talented people and organizing the software development process. Actively involved in architecture reviews and developing the Cloud and developer ecosystem infrastructure, leading the Cloud team from a technical point of view. Awarded patents in the wearable space. Contributing to the technological vision of the company.

Software Product and Engineering Manager

Vector Watch

2014-6 - 2015-12 · 1 yr 7 mos

Responsible for the software development and product definition. Doing project planning, supervising and coordinating the Cloud, Mobile and Embedded development teams on Amazon infrastructure, Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Vector Operating System. Involved in designing the Cloud-Mobile architecture. Full stack engineer, actively involved in developing the Cloud backend and frontend (Java, Javascript, Angular, JPA, J2EE, Hibernate, MySql, NodeJS), Amazon WS dev-ops but also contributing on the mobile platform with code contributions.