Colin Armstrong San Francisco Bay Area, California me@colinarms.com Blog / GitHub / LinkedIn / Twitter

Hi!

I'm Colin. I'm working on something new in web3.

I used to be an engineering manager & senior SWE at Google, from 2017 - 2022. I managed the Communications Abuse team, responsible for protecting billions of users across numerous Google products.

In 2015, I spent some time working at Coinbase. I helped launch Coinbase in Canada, and I improved their anti-abuse infrastructure.

I've also built a handful of side-projects. I've built a flight-deal-finding Facebook messenger chatbot that found millions of dollars worth of flight deals (micro-acquired in 2017); a minimal uptime monitoring platform (micro-acquired in 2020); and a location-based livestreaming app (acquisition offer in 2015).

My interests include privacy, cryptocurrency, anti-abuse, good UX, and coffee. ☕️

• Engineering Manager at Google, Communications Abuse Sep 2017 - March 2022
• Internship at Google, Search Jan - Apr 2016 and Sep - Dec 2016
• Intern then part-time SWE at Coinbase, Payments May - Aug 2015 and Sep - Dec 2015
• Internship at Blackberry, Devices Sep - Dec 2014
• BASc. Honours Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo Sep 2012 - Jun 2017

Startups & projects

• BoltScale - better uptime monitoring & status pages Apr - Sep 2020, micro-acquired
• BoltFare - AI powered flight-deal-finding Facebook chatbot Oct 2016 - Aug 2017, micro-acquired
  • Over $1m in flight deals found from 10k+ users
• YepLive - mobile livestreaming app Mar 2015 - Jun 2015, acquisition offer
  • Thousands of users across iOS, Android and web

Press

• Side projects & startups
  • TechCrunch - Yeplive brings landscape video and web comments to the live streaming fight
  • WhatsYourTech - Canadian app Yeplive aims to take chunk of livestreaming pie
  • TheNextWeb - BoltFare's chatbot finds you super-cheap fares in minutes
  • TechVibes - BoltFare is a chatbot-based travel agent that finds you the best flight deals
• Google (notable press covering projects that me or my team was directly involved in)
  • Safer conversations in Messages with Verified SMS and Spam Protection
  • Safety first: Announcing 11 new G Suite security features
• Personal
  • Chinese trip plants "Seeds for the Future" in Aurora app developer
  • Huawei program sends 20 engineering students to China

Awards & Recognition

• 'Top Cryptocurrency Hack' at HackMIT in 2014, ultimately leading to an internship at Coinbase
• Highest performance evaluation - Outstanding - at 5 internships during my undergrad
• Top 13% in all users on StackOverflow in 2014