Introducing: Kin Standalone App Team
We, at Kin, believe that the only way to succeed is by doing things together. As we’ve put it in the past — “win together by working together.”
Obviously, our motto tells a lot about the way we work internally, but it also says a thing or two about our entire culture and the way we look at you — our supporters — and your role in this. We feel you’re an integral part of the project and keeping you in the know is key for us. For this reason we decided to open not only our code, but also our office for you to see who we are and what we’re all about.
Netanel’s post describes the structure of our teams — 3 in total:
- Standalone App team
- Ecosystem team
- Blockchain team
Over the upcoming weeks you’ll get a comprehensive understanding of each team’s product vision. It’s a post that will be written by each team’s product manager and will include an extensive breakdown and layout — for the first time — of what we’re actually building here. Yesterday we shared the Standalone App team’s vision and goals. But today we provide you with a behind the scenes look of the team members.
Sarit Ariel, Product Manager
Sarit has been a part of Kik for just over a month now and brings tons of experience in building amazing products. She’s spent her entire product career (over a decade) building products from scratch and creating new experiences.
Sarit holds a B.Sc in Industrial Engineering (information systems) from the Technion, and is also a long distance hiking enthusiast and beer geek.
You can follow her on her Twitter @saritariel and Linkedin.
“You only live once. Keep walking.”
Berry Ventura Lev, Technical Domain Owner
Berry combines her experience and love for mobile software development with her passion to continuously bring out the best in people. She has 15 years of experience in software development and tech leading roles, with the last 5 years in mobile.
She mentors @ she-codes.org, an organization promoting female developers in the Israeli high-tech industry, and also enjoys cycling with her hubby and two kids, playing the piano or spending some quiet time on the beach.
You can follow her on Linkedin.
“Always on the lookout for new challenges that will take me out of my comfort zone.”
Shay Baz, Android Engineer
Shay is a senior Android developer, with more than 15 years experience, super passionate about Android and making sure everything is pixel perfect. He loves doing complex UI, building delightful products for users and adding fun animations. Prior to Kik, Shay worked at Rounds Android app.
Outside of work, Shay loves to travel and explore city life around the globe. Oh, and he’s also a collector of limited edition Absolut Vodka bottles.
“You can tell if someone is a true friend if he helps you expand your vodka bottle collection.”
Natan Rolnik, iOS Engineer
Natan is a programmer with 8 years of iOS development experience — in both Objective-C and Swift — and passionate about beautiful UIs and delightful animations. He also likes to build things in Ruby and JavaScript, mostly in NodeJS and React — technologies that he has learnt while building his pet projects.
When not working, you will find Natan taking care of his family, or playing soccer, tennis, squash, or running.
You can follow him on Twitter, where he tweets mostly about iOS development resources: @natanrolnik
“Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
Ami Blonder, Backend Engineer
Ami has over a decade of experience in various programming languages and platforms. Versed in C++, Python, golang, and even C#, Ami is a versatile programmer that is up for all kinds of delinquencies.
In addition, Ami really loves cheese and baked goods. and cats. Oh ok — and chocolate too.
You can follow him on Linkedin.
“If it’s not chocolate, it’s not breakfast.”
Aryeh Katz, QA & Automation Engineer
Aryeh made his first website at the age of 13 (FrontPage & Dreamweaver anyone?), and by the age of 17 he started freelancing as a full-time job developing in PHP, JavaScript, Python, Java and others. For the past 7 years, Aryeh had the opportunity to build a huge recipes portal where he was in charge of developing everything by himself.
When he’s not working, he will most likely search YouTube for interesting videos, from Science (Smarter Every Day) to “Slow mo guys” (You gotta love those! ).
You can follow him on Linkedin.
“He who says he can and he who says he can’t are both usually right.”
Shiran Sela, Product Designer
Shiran is UI, UX and branding passionate, using design thinking to simplify interfaces and create engaging experiences. She graduated from Shenkar College of Engineering and Design with a BA in visual communication design. She worked as a design lead for tech software startups experienced with B2B and B2C products, native mobile, hybrid, and desktop apps.
When not working, Shiran loves to experiment in the kitchen, currently getting better in pottery, and a pilates fan :)
You can follow her Linkedin and Instagram
“The best part in my job is to be a part of products that enrich people’s lives.”
