Icurrentlybuildthefloorotherengineersstandon.
But I've spent years on the other side too — CTO of a TechStars company, engineer at fintech and crypto startups, founder of things that didn't exist until I built them. I know what it costs to ship when the stakes are real and the team is small.
Kyungtak Woo
currently
Google · LLVM
Compilers · x86 · AArch64
before
Zillow · Lyft · Microsoft
Product · Systems · Scale
startups
Mauna · AirTM · Thorchain
CTO · Fintech · Crypto
from
Citizen of the world
Korea · LatAm · USA
The compiler you didn't pick still runs your code.
Tech Lead on LLVM at Google — x86, AArch64, hermetic toolchains. The build infrastructure underneath Chrome, Android, and more.
Google · 2023–present
Infrastructure
A startup that made it to TechStars.
CTO at Mauna from zero — owned the full technical stack, made the architectural calls, and helped get the company into one of the most selective accelerators in the world.
Mauna · 2022–2023
CTO
A home tour that closes deals.
Built the 3D Gaussian splat rendering pipeline that made Zillow's immersive tours fast enough to matter. 21% increase in sales conversions.
Zillow · 2022–2023
Product
Code running on an exchange with no one in charge.
Contributed to Thorchain in Go — a decentralized cross-chain exchange where the protocol is the institution. No CEO, no kill switch, no safety net.
Thorchain · 2021
Crypto
A city moved differently because a backend changed.
Designed distributed backend services connecting Lyft's autonomous and electric fleets to the coordination layer. Millions of rides downstream.
Lyft · 2020–2022
Systems
Financial rails for people banks ignored.
Built the security toolchain and microservice backbone for AirTM — a fintech serving markets where the local currency is collapsing and a dollar account is survival.
AirTM · 2017–2020
Fintech
things built at the wrong layer
A migration that worked, then had to be unmigrated.
A toolchain so hermetic it locked out the person who built it.
A system that was fast until it had to be correct.
outside the terminal
shiya.studio
Physical Korean photo rooms in Condesa, Mexico City. The kind of space that didn't exist here until we built it. 15k followers and growing.
Founder · CDMX
chef.coreano
Korean food, built for Mexico. 62k Instagram followers, 121k on TikTok. Started as a personal project, became something people actually follow.
Founder · @chef.coreano
Also: ICPC regional finalist three times. Interviewed 200+ engineers for big tech. Consulted independently. Never stayed in one lane long enough to get comfortable.
systems i depend on
Coffee, black, before 8am.
Vim motions.
The LLVM mailing list at 11pm.
Reggaeton on long compile cycles.
My mother's handwriting in recipe margins.
Mexico City's grid — the only city that makes spatial sense to me.
An ICPC contest with ten minutes left.
The specific silence of a clean build.
If any of this is interesting to you,
the rest is easier to say over email.
education
ITESM Monterrey
Computer Systems Engineering
3.9 GPA