David Poll

David Poll is an engineering leader who has spent nearly two decades building the platforms and tools that developers use every day. He currently leads the Google Cloud client libraries team, working to make cloud services accessible and intuitive for developers worldwide.

Building Developer Platforms

David’s career has centered on a simple question: How do we build things that make other builders more powerful?

This journey has taken him through the evolution of modern software development:

  • At Microsoft, he worked on Silverlight, learning the art of framework design and API craftsmanship
  • At Parse (employee #4), he helped pioneer backend-as-a-service, making mobile development accessible to millions before the Facebook acquisition
  • As founder/CEO of Hoomi, he tackled identity and authentication challenges, gaining hard-won startup lessons
  • At Google, he’s led teams across Firebase, Google Assistant, Google Play Services, and now Google Cloud—each role teaching different aspects of platform scale, adoption, and evolution

Through these experiences, he’s learned that great developer experience requires both engineering excellence and deep empathy for the developers using your tools. The best platforms don’t just solve technical problems—they unlock new possibilities for what people can build.

Leadership Philosophy

David believes engineering leadership is about creating environments where talented people can do their best work. His approach combines technical depth with genuine care for the human side of software development—a perspective shaped by growing up in a family of therapists and reinforced by years of managing diverse engineering teams.

He’s particularly interested in how AI is transforming not just how we write code, but who gets to be a developer and what kinds of problems become solvable.

Beyond the Terminal

When not thinking about developer experience, David can be found:

  • Navigating the beautiful chaos of raising three children with his wife
  • Singing barbershop harmony (because four-part harmony is basically distributed systems for humans)
  • Writing about engineering leadership, platform strategy, and the future of software development

Background

David holds B.A. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, where he was recognized as a Siebel Scholar.

Connect

Views expressed here are my own.