About Me

Hey there! I’m Michael Rebello. I’ve been doing iOS development since iOS 4, and currently work on Connect-Swift at Buf, building the future of APIs with Protobuf.

Prior, I was a Staff Engineer at Lyft for 6 years and co-founded a social travel company called Path. Before that, I worked in enterprise SaaS and started and sold two small software companies.

I currently live in San Diego with my wife Milla and our two cats, Pushkin & Bailey. In my free time, I enjoy baking, hiking, surfing, bouldering, and learning to speak Russian. My wife and I also launched an app called Earful to solve our own need for listening to news articles on-the-go.

This page contains a little bit about my work background – feel free to contact me or ping me in the Buf Slack.

Public Talks

• BA Swiftable Conference: Envoy Mobile & The Upcoming Networking Revolution
• App Performance Cafe Podcast: Abstracting Networking from the Application Layer
• Lyft Mobile Podcast: Mobile Networking
• Swift Language User Group: gRPC & iOS at Lyft

Featured Posts

• Buf: Announcing Connect-Swift: You’ll actually want to use Protobuf on iOS
• Lyft Engineering: Lyft’s Journey Through Mobile Networking
• Lyft Engineering: Recovering from Crashes with Safe Mode

Past Work

Buf (2022 - Present)

Wrote and maintain Connect-Swift, an open-source, lightweight, idiomatic library that finally unlocks Protobuf’s long-promised productivity wins for Swift. I am also involved in customer engineering and developer relations.

Lyft (2016 - 2022)

My first few months at Lyft were focused on shipping features to improve Shared Rides. After leading an architecture effort on the iOS driver app, I was asked to join a very small “lab” team of designers and 2 other iOS engineers tasked with redesigning the rider app which boosted bookings and became the foundation for the Lyft rider app we know today. I was one of the founding members and maintainers of the open-source Envoy Mobile project, was responsible for writing Lyft’s iOS experimentation, analytics, and gRPC streaming components, and co-led Lyft’s mobile-wide adoption of Protobuf APIs - authoring a Go-based Swift Protobuf generator and partnering with product teams to achieve 100% utilization. Lastly, I led a new team in the mobile infrastructure org which was focused on networking and reliability, and was an editor of the Lyft Engineering Blog.

Path - Co-Founder & CTO (2020 - 2022)

Co-founded Path, a platform to find the best spots through short-form, relatable video reviews from local experts and recommendations from friends. In 2021, the company raised a funding round led by 75 & Sunny Ventures. As the sole technical team member, I built Path’s backend servers and iOS app from the ground up. I partnered closely with the product team to iterate based on data and user feedback, and was involved in investor relations/fundraising. After 2 years of working towards product-market-fit, we decided to wind the company down and returned the majority of funds back to investors.

ActivityHub/NEXMachine - iOS Product & Architecture (2014 - 2016)

Joined ActivityHub (NEXMachine) to build their iOS calendar app and backend which integrated with several external services. A few months later, they acquired my company (Scholastic Connections), and I began leading product development for both initiatives before later closing down Scholastic Connections as ActivityHub refocused on the enterprise space as a Salesforce partner. I then led product engineering, hired new engineers, contributed as an IC, and participated in investor meetings.

Flounder Apps (Acquired in 2016) - Co-Founder (2013 - 2016)

Co-founded Flounder Apps, focused on building Ambition: Strategy War Game – an iOS app designed as a complex, turn-based strategy game. The product was acquired by another organization in 2016.

Scholastic Connections (Acquired in 2015) - Founder (2014 - 2015)

Founded Scholastic Connections, a company that partnered with classroom management providers to create an iOS app which provided teachers and families with easy access to their students’ data. In 2014, the company was acquired by ActivityHub (NEXMachine), after which the product expanded to Android and grew its user base before ultimately being shut down when ActivityHub pivoted towards the enterprise space.

Independent iOS Developer (2011 - 2014)

Contracted independently on iOS projects for several companies. Additionally, I created a few of my own apps which were distributed on the App Store, some of which were eventually sold off.