About

Afik Cohen is a seasoned Metaphysician, Android hacker, and functional programming enthusiast with over 14 years of relevant experience. He is passionate about building apps that solve real-world problems and hacking things to make them do what he wants. Afik has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the Missouri University of Science and Technology. Currently, Afik is a Staff Android Engineer at TikTok, where he sets standards and technical direction for the growing department and leads the development of several major features for their 1 billion+ users. He architected and launched app-defining new formats like Photo Mode and Background Audio Mode, delivered several product-market fit experiments for the Discover tab, and founded the Static Analysis Working Group, setting the first company-wide Java & Kotlin code standards. Afik also mentored junior teammates on architectural best practices and identified and coordinated efforts to resolve common developer pain points and infra issues. Previously, Afik worked as a Senior Android Engineer at Airbnb's Experience business, where he built native implementations of key app features and UI components. He was part of several working groups, including the New Language Working Group and the Experiences mobile code quality working group. Afik also worked with his team to launch Online Experiences in April, a completely new product generating over 11,000 bookings in the first week alone. Unfortunately, Afik was one of the 1900 employees affected by the COVID-19-related layoffs. Before Airbnb, Afik was the Android Lead at Skip, where he led the Android side of the company, taking over the main client app used by riders to rent scooters and the internal Android app used by the field operations team. He built and launched key features like Google Pay, a Google MLkit-based QR scanner, and a fully native implementation of Ranger mode, which allowed freelancers in the field to make money charging their scooters. In the first six months, 90% of all scooter rentals in San Francisco were Skip scooters. Afik's tech stack includes Android, infra, iOS, Mobile, UI, Research Scientist, Backend, designer, and Software Engineer. He loves projects that make a material impact on people's everyday lives and has built consumer apps both big and small, solving hard problems in urban mobility and logistics. Afik has even been getting into IoT and hardware in recent years.