The app

Elevate is a personalized brain-training app designed to improve your skills and boost your confidence, productivity, and earning power. With 40+ games teaching real-world skills in math, reading, writing, speaking, and recall, Elevate is like having a personal coach for your brain. The program tracks your performance and adjusts to your skill level, allowing you to measure your progress and compare with others.

Published by Elevate Labs, Elevate’s games are designed in collaboration with experts and backed by independent analysis, so users can trust that they’re receiving the best training possible. Apple named Elevate the Best iPhone App of the Year in 2014, cementing its reputation as the premier brain-training app. Since its launch, Elevate has helped over 50 million people improve their communication and math skills.

My Contributions

I was part of the original team that launched Elevate in 2014 and contributed in various roles over the years, from Game Developer to Director of Product Engineering. Here’s a brief overview of my contributions to the project:

On the technical side:

  • Led the development of 3 games (Lua), and contributed to several others present in the Elevate app today.
  • Built a testing framework (Lua) to validate game content, reducing the number of content-related bugs in production to virtually zero.
  • Owned cross-platform business logic layer (C++), building and optimizing features like games localization, weekly goals, and performance tracking.
  • Played a key role in setting up a data warehouse and designed, shipped, and analyzed 20+ A/B experiments (SQL, LookML).

On the management side:

  • Reported to the CEO and managed 3 teams (around 10 people).
  • Designed engineering career ladder, interview and onboarding processes.
  • Implemented employee development programs, including Brown Bag Talks and 5% Days.