Gary Haran
Product Engineer & Engineering Leader
Greater Montreal Region, Canada
Builder at heart
I've spent 80% of my career inside startups. I like to move fast, wear many hats, focusing on what matters. I love finding product/market fit and building teams who want to change the world.
I thrive at the intersection of engineering and product leadership. I can go deep on the code and then step back to set direction, mentor engineers, and ship things users love.
What I bring to the table
Engineering
Full-stack and mobile development. I write production code, review PRs, set technical direction, and ship software that scales.
Product & Growth
I think like a founder. From validating ideas quickly to driving acquisition loops, I care as much about why we build as what we build.
Team Leadership
I build high-trust engineering cultures. I hire well, grow people, and create environments where teams do their best work.
How I can help
Web & Mobile
I build for both web and native mobile. On the web I use Rails and Hotwire to ship fast without the overhead of a JS framework. On mobile I build true native apps in Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android. I can take a product from zero to live on both platforms, often with a single team and shared backend.
Growth & Performance
I've run acquisition and retention experiments at multiple startups. SEO, paid, referral loops, onboarding funnels. I treat performance as a feature: Lighthouse scores, Core Web Vitals, and page speed are levers I actively pull to improve conversion.
Product Market Fit
I know what it feels like to search for PMF and what it feels like to find it. Retention curves, NPS cohorts, qualitative signals. But more importantly, I know when to stop theorising and just ship to learn.
A/B Testing
I know the difference between a gut feeling and a statistically significant result. I've designed experiments, understood sample sizing, p-values, and confidence intervals — and more importantly, I know when not to run a test and just make the call.
AI & LLMs
I understand LLMs well enough to build with them — prompt engineering, RAG, tool use, embeddings. I've integrated AI into real products: Index.Recipes uses it to import and parse recipes instantly so users never transcribe by hand. AI is here to stay and I intend to be there for the next big thing.
I excel at building MVPs
Most engineers are deep in one area. I've spent my career being useful across many cross-cutting concerns. I love writing code, shaping the product, growing the user base, and leading the team. That breadth is exactly what an MVP needs.
When you're building an MVP, every decision is a trade-off between speed and quality. I've made those calls hundreds of times. I know what to cut, what to defer, and what we cannot skip. I know which technical debt will kill you later and which is fine to take on now.
Recent projects
Built and shipped independently.
index.recipes
Grandma's recipe box, everywhere
Like the index card recipes your grandmother kept on the counter — but organized, always with you, and available on any device. Import recipes instantly using AI so you never have to transcribe anything by hand.
voila.rsvp
Event RSVPs, simplified
A web platform for creating and managing event RSVPs without the friction. Currently powering live, in-person dating events in the Greater Montreal.
Untility
Beautiful countdown widgets
An iOS app for creating elegant timeline widgets that count down to life's important events. Privacy focused and available on iPhone and iPad.