About

Michael Omoto is an Engineering Manager at Google, currently working on User Generated Content for Google Maps in Tokyo. He has a diverse background, having studied Psychology at UC Irvine and worked in neuroscience, behavioral therapy, teaching, and consumer science before writing his first line of code in 2011 and joining Presto (YC S10). At Presto, he eventually became the Director of Engineering while it scaled to a 200M valuation. Moving back to Japan, Michael joined Mercari as the first native English-speaking manager and helped introduce Silicon Valley culture to a largely Japanese organization. He implemented engineering onboarding, hired multiple classes of new graduates, and ushered hundreds of mid-career engineers into the company ranks. He created a leadership forum to give a voice to English-speaking engineers, was responsible for Mercari's partnership with Women Who Code, and created the Global Engineering Meetup, a community of English-speaking engineers that meets monthly. He was directly involved in Diversity and Inclusion at Mercari, sponsoring both Women Who Code Connect 2019 and Grace Hopper Celebration 2019. On the product side, he was responsible for Shipping and Payments for the entire US application and served as a bridge to the business side to ensure engineering work accommodated the needs of all stakeholders, particularly accounting. Michael's expertise is in software engineering, with a focus on frontend and infrastructure. He has worked as a Senior Software Engineer, Research Scientist, and Software Engineer. He is also a part-time instructor for the part-time prep course at Hackbright Academy, where he runs lectures, discussions, and labs, performs code reviews, and mentors students. In his current role at Google, Michael manages three teams around targeting, infra, and frontend, working to make the best possible contribution experience for User Generated Content on Google Maps. He has spent the last ten years trying to ensure that other people's attempts at learning programming are not as painful as his own. With 16.46 years of relevant experience, Michael is a highly skilled and experienced engineering manager with a unique background and a passion for improving the industry.