About Convex

About us

Convex's mission is to fundamentally change how software is built on the Internet and who gets to build it. We aim to empower web developers to build fast, reliable, and dynamic apps without complex backend engineering or database administration.

Our team includes technologists who have led exabyte-scale storage projects, designed custom global databases with trillions of records, built some of the world's most popular web apps, and shipped desktop and mobile software onto billions of devices. All of us have deep experience with managing complex full-stack apps on high-growth teams.

Now at Convex, we've created an entirely new and substantially better platform for teams of the future. We're motivated by the prospect of a new wave of developers using Convex to build amazing applications with unprecedented ease.

Meet the team

Jamie TurnerHe/Him

Co-Founder / CEO

Jamie is a co-founder and the CEO of Convex.

Prior to Convex, Jamie was a Senior Engineering Director at Dropbox, leading the Business Platform and the Storage / Databases groups. Earlier in his tenure at Dropbox, Jamie was a Principal Engineer, launching several significant projects in synchronization and storage with his Convex co-founders James and Sujay. Over ten years before Dropbox, Jamie held leadership positions at several startups, most recently as the Head of Engineering at Bump, a former top-10 mobile app acquired by Google in 2013.

Jamie brings to Convex an enduring obsession with databases, networking, and protocols. Over the course of his career, he’s created dozens of related open-source projects, collectively with thousands of GitHub stars and heavy industry use.

James CowlingHe/Him

Co-Founder / CTO

James is CTO/Cofounder at Convex which means he’s accountable for technical decision-making whenever he’s not thinking about how many more plants we should get for the office. He’s most passionate about simple elegant solutions to complex problems.

Before Convex James was Senior Principal Engineer at Dropbox and tech lead on a bunch of projects including building their multi-exabyte geo-distributed storage system and migrating Dropbox off of S3, multi-homing Dropbox infra, and building database systems that handle millions of queries per second. His favorite part of the job was mentoring junior folks who ended up being senior folks, and spending time with smart, friendly, highly-motivated people.

James grew up in Sydney, spent far too much time in school, and eventually received a PhD at MIT specializing in large-scale distributed transaction processing and consensus protocols. In his spare time he likes building stuff and anything involving motorcycles. Rumor has it he has a cover band with his cofounders.

Sujay JayakarHe/Him

Co-Founder / Chief Scientist

Sujay is Chief Scientist/Cofounder at Convex, where he’s still trying to find a way to spend the Science budget on Erlenmeyer flasks. In the meantime, he spends most of his time working with code, designing systems, and dreaming about the best version of everything.

Before Convex, he was a Principal Engineer at Dropbox, where he worked on file synchronization, large object storage with James and Jamie, and the email system. In particular, he was the tech lead for Nucleus, a full rewrite of Dropbox’s sync engine in Rust that made file syncing faster, safer, and more hackable than ever. He also did a stint at Microsoft Research, working on a kernel bypass TCP stack that attained 30 Gbps per core and 7µs roundtrip times in the datacenter.

Outside work, his interests range from reading Knuth to curating small food goods.

Myoung KangShe/Her

Head of Finance

Myoung joins us on a part time basis as she is a fractional CFO for startups and the finance expert in residence for First Round Capital.

Previously, she worked at Notion, MyFitnessPal, and many other companies that were acquired. She manages the finance function at Convex.

Indy KhareHe/Him

Head of Engineering

Indy is the Head of Engineering at Convex.

Before Convex, Indy helped start and scale Google Photos from 0 to over 1 billion users. In addition to running mobile, web, and core experiences teams for Google Photos, Indy led various cross-functional efforts, including mobile camera partnerships. Before Google, Indy worked at various startups, including as mobile lead at Bump, a top 10 mobile app, and co-founded a startup that built the first iOS apps on the Apple App Store.

Indy is passionate about building great human experiences and how products fit into people’s lives. He’s excited to enable more great experiences with Convex.

Gautam GuptaHe/Him

Software Engineer

Nipunn KoorapatiHe/Him

Software Engineer

Nipunn is a software engineer at Convex, where he loves figuring out how to make the developer experience simple, magical, and indispensably useful for customers.

Before Convex, Nipunn was at Dropbox for 8 years. In his time, he was a technical lead on desktop client sync engine and developer infrastructure efforts. He made many lifelong friends along the way and plans to repeat that process again.

Nipunn enjoys spending time with his dog Pepper, bowling, finding exceptional quality noodles, sipping tea, trying new craft beer, Ultimate Frisbee, bowling, filing bugs to open source projects, and subsequently fixing them.

Emma Forman LingThey/Them

Software Engineer

Emma is a software engineer at Convex working primarily on Convex's backend services.

Before joining Convex in February 2022, they worked on data storage at Commure, a healthcare tech startup. They love building tools that empower developers and hope that one day their job is obsolete, replaced by a backend-as-a-service like Convex.

Outside of work, Emma can be found swimming in the bay, cycling around town, or reading on BART.

Cheree HardyShe/Her

Office Boss Extraordinaire

Delivering exceptional assistance has always been an essential part of a day’s work for Cheree. As Convex’s very own Office Manager (and Executive Assistant to two of the Founders), Cheree works behind the scenes to support the team’s internal operations relating to office procedures, events, space utilization, and perks to name a few.

Cheree began her career with Convex in 2022 after having already gained 8 years of experience as both an Office Manager and Executive Assistant. Prior to joining Convex, Cheree worked with several other California-based companies over the last decade with an emphasis on Systems Administration, Vendor Management, and Employee Appreciation, ranging from startups to well-established corporations. As our Office Boss Extraordinaire, Cheree brings with her a dedication to fostering an inclusive workplace and a passion for cultivating strong, lasting relationships.

In her spare time, Cheree enjoys spending time with her two children, organizing spaces, road-trips, and overly committing to DIY projects that cause her to reevaluate her life choices in the process of their completion.

Preslav LeHe/Him

Software Engineer

Preslav is Software Engineer at Convex.

Prior to Convex Preslav was Principal Engineer at Dropbox and area tech lead of the persistent systems group, which designs, builds, and operates databases at petabyte scale and storage at exabyte scale.

Preslav was an avid gamer growing up, and got into computer science via programming competitions and then building Nvidia drivers. He later took off to startup land with Everbread airplanes, quickly passed over VMware data centers, and then reached the clouds to help bring Dropbox back.

Preslav is now back to startup land with Convex looking to take off again. He is excited to build a reliable platform to empower developers to build their apps rather than reinvent the wheel and solve the same backend problems over and over again.

Arnold Trakhtenberg

Software Engineer

Lee DanilekHe/Him

Software Engineer

Tom BallingerHe/Him

Software Engineer

Tom is a software engineer at Convex, what fun! He's interested in empowering programmers of all stripes with developer tools, from reactive backends to clear mental models to the hottest new spreadsheet formulas.

Tom previously worked on a platform for reactive documents and visualizations at Observable and on a variety of projects at Dropbox including migrating the desktop client to browser-based UI.

He's taught compiler and computer architecture courses and facilitated at the Recurse Center primarily by goading people into writing BitTorrent clients. He has a special place in his heart for REPLs and is going to switch from vim to VSCode any day now.

Bryan LiuHe/Him

Head of Talent

Bryan is the Head of Talent at Convex which encompasses all things Recruiting & Talent Acquisition to building a world-class team.

Prior to joining Convex, Bryan spent over 10 years hiring for the early teams at Dropbox, Pinterest, and Plaid scaling from hundreds of employees to becoming pre-IPO ready companies.

Outside of recruiting, Bryan is best known to have a love for good food (pizza and cookies) and mediocre exercise (slow-jogging and barely-powerlifting) to burn the calories away.

Sarah ShaderShe/Her

Software Engineer

Rebecca WangShe/Her

Software Engineer

Prior to Convex, Rebecca worked on various platform and infrastructure teams at Dropbox and DoorDash. She contributed to projects ranging from rewriting the document store of the Dropbox search engine to building on the logistics platform that powers the execution of DoorDash deliveries.

She cares deeply about mental health and creating a culture where people feel seen and empowered to be their full selves.

Outside of work, Rebecca loves being in nature and going to as many national parks as possible, learning self-defense at her local dojo, binging anime, and playing with her dog Moxie.

Michal SrbHe/Him

Software Engineer

Prior to joining Convex, Michal spent 7 years building products and features at Facebook and Meta. He led the teams that built the first version of Creative Hub and the first version of Monetization Manager. After Michal spent 3.5 years helping people find meaningful connections on Facebook Dating.

When he’s not coding, Michal enjoys social dancing, climbing, hiking and cycling. He hails from Prague, Czech Republic, and also claims to have been awarded the British passport for surviving 8 years of London weather.

Ian MacartneyHe/Him

Developer Experience Engineer

Ian works on Developer Experience at Convex.

He has been a full stack freelancer for companies such as The New York Times, backend engineer and technical lead at Dropbox, mechanical engineer at MindTribe, and iOS engineer back before the term "iOS" was coined.

He loves ideas and ergonomic tools.

Sam JuddHe/Him

Software Engineer

Rakeeb HossainHe/Him

Software Engineer

Rakeeb is a software engineer at Convex. Before Convex, he graduated from the University of Waterloo where he researched operating systems and embedded key-value store design in the Reliable Computer Systems group. He has worked on distributed database and ad infrastructure teams at Snapchat, Tesla's Autopilot team, and has been part of several startups while in school.

He brings to the team an obsession with product engineering and a passion for elegant abstractions, systems, and programming languages.

Outside of work, he spends most of his time in nature surfing, swimming, running, or exploring. He also dabbles in competitive programming and recreational math when he has time.

Jordan HuntHe/Him

Software Engineer

Jordan is a software engineer at Convex. Before Convex, he studied at Harvey Mudd College. While in school, he worked on backend infrastructure at various companies including Netflix and Asana. He obsesses over making complex things simple and brings a passion for programming languages.

When he’s not coding, he spends most of his time traveling, snowboarding, playing basketball, reading, and hanging out with his friends. He also likes to dabble a bit in poker.

Abhi VaidyanathaHe/Him

Developer Experience Engineer

Abhi is a creator at heart who specializes in the production of technical art and content. He has been an early-stage engineer and early-stage DevRel at multiple infrastructure startups and has a background in leading technical marketing initiatives.

During his off-time, he is a DJ, music producer, Magic the Gathering Judge, competitive Super Smash Bros. player, and jazz drummer.