Chetan Ankola
PRODUCT ENGINEER · AI, MOBILE & INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCES
San Francisco Bay Area chetan.ankola@gmail.com cankolabuilds.com LinkedIn GitHub
Hands-on builder with an engineering foundation and product leadership across Yahoo Mail, AI tools and independent apps. Owns the path from user problem to working software: interface, APIs, data, deployment and iteration. Builds with coding agents, validates the result and stays close to the people using it.
Experience
Yahoo | Product Management & Engineering
- DROP - internal app platform. Built the product, Node.js/SQLite backend, browser SDK and GCP deployment. Supplied identity, data, realtime events, files and AI APIs so colleagues could publish tools; added owner-scoped editing, recoverable updates and read-only sharing from user feedback.
- OCEAN - organizational knowledge. Built web, Slack and CLI experiences for source-backed planning answers, with versioned snapshots, retrieval, model routing and feedback. Partnered with knowledge-base and squad owners on source contracts and coverage.
- CUSS - customer research. Built an AI investigation workflow across five feedback sources using SQLite/FTS and DuckDB. Added source/date filters, inspectable evidence, read-only SQL and independent count checks; worked with customer-listening partners on useful reports.
- Consumer Mail. Led Catch Up from concept to the June 2025 cross-platform launch. Built mobile Calendar experiences with engineering and ML partners, including LLM event extraction; led Digest and Spaces work and translated UXR findings into Home requirements.
- Engineering foundation. Owned the Search Assist frontend library; rebuilt the mobile search frontend in Node.js and React. Built Mail AR experiences and authoring tools for non-engineers. Co-inventor, US Patent 10,679,414 (2020); work recognized by the 2018 Lumiere Technology Award.
Nokia Siemens Networks | R&D Engineer
Built telecom R&D and performance tooling for WiMAX, W-CDMA and LTE using C/C++, Python, simulation and test automation.
Selected independent products
- DexRelay. Shipped an iPhone app and Mac runtime for remotely steering coding agents: SwiftUI, QR pairing, LAN-first WebSockets, Tailscale fallback, connection recovery and in-app previews.
- AppTruffle & Polly. Shipped App Store products spanning market research and camera experiences. Built AppTruffle's Python/SQLite collection pipeline and Cloudflare snapshot delivery; Polly uses AVFoundation, CloudKit backup and StoreKit subscriptions.
- 3DITIONS & Foldline Tales. Built interactive Three.js worlds, an editable-world storefront and a playable iPhone storybook. Connected real-time graphics, interaction, original art direction and product delivery.
- Creative work, October 2026. Created Foldline, a driving game, for an invited ElevenLabs × Chroma Awards paid campaign. Moonlit Swamp was featured by OpenAI/ChatGPT; Cozy Creek was shared by Three.js and OpenAI Developers.
Skills
Engineering: JavaScript, Node.js, React, Swift/SwiftUI, Python, SQL, REST, WebSockets, Three.js, GCP, Cloudflare. Product: prototyping, API design, AI retrieval and evaluation, experimentation, accessibility, cross-functional delivery.
Education
University of Southern California - M.S., Computer Science, 2010-2012
PES Institute of Technology - B.E., Information Science