About

Francis Kelly is a seasoned software architect with over 26 years of relevant experience in the industry. He currently serves as the Principal Software Engineer at Lookout, where he focuses on the security stack for the enterprise iOS client, Lookout for Work. Francis's expertise lies in recommendations/personalization, large-scale data processing, and scalable system design. He is passionate about building scalable software with an emphasis on crafting simple solutions rapidly, especially in a start-up environment. He has a strong background in personalization and machine learning and excels at solving problems in web architecture through the use and customization of existing technologies, as well as the development of new software. In 2004, Francis co-founded Loomia, an online content recommendation/personalization platform, where he served as Chief Architect and CTO until 2010. He was responsible for designing and implementing Loomia's scalable and flexible personalization service, which was adopted by several prominent companies such as The Wall Street Journal, Time, Audible.com, Fox News, and Travelocity.com. At its height, Loomia was serving 1.6 billion recommendations a month. Francis also led the design and implementation of Loomia's SeenThis? Facebook application, which was one of the first social recommendations applications. He has a particular interest in helping start-ups deal with the many challenges that arise in building a team and a product. In addition to his current role at Lookout, Francis has held various positions in the past, including Staff Software Engineer at Lookout and Advisor at PredictionIO, a start-up that developed an open-source recommendation engine. He provided advice on technical, strategic, and business issues to PredictionIO, which was later acquired by Salesforce in February 2016. Francis holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics (summa cum laude) from Yale University, where he graduated in 1990. He is proficient in several technologies, including Software Engineering, iOS, Machine Learning, Python, Web, ETL, Mobile, Backend, Research Scientist, and Flask.