Daniel Tunkelang - The Founding Story of Endeca (edited) Artwork

Develomentor

The Develomentor podcast is an interview-based show designed to help you find your path in technology. Each interview explores the career path and lessons learned of individuals who have built successful careers in technology across a range of roles, including software engineering, data science, engineering management and sales engineering. A monthly bonus episode features a panel discussing timely topics in technology, like compensation, freelancing, joining a startup and much more.

All Episodes

Develomentor

Daniel Tunkelang - The Founding Story of Endeca (edited)

March 04, 2021 • Grant Ingersoll

Daniel Tunkelang is currently an independent consultant or, in his words, a 'high-class consultant' for technology companies. Previous to this, he was a data science and engineering executive who has built and led some of the strongest teams in the software industry.

Daniel studied computer science and math at MIT and has a PhD in computer science from CMU. He was a founding employee and chief scientist of Endeca, a search pioneer that Oracle acquired for $1.1B. He led a local search team at Google. Prior to this, he was a director of data science and engineering at LinkedIn, and he established their query understanding team.

Daniel is a widely recognized writer and speaker. He is frequently invited to speak at academic and industry conferences, particularly in the areas of information retrieval, web science, and data science. He has written the definitive textbook on faceted search (now a standard for ecommerce sites), established an annual symposium on human-computer interaction and information retrieval, and authored 24 US patents. His social media posts have attracted over a million page views.

Daniel also advises and consults for companies that can benefit strategically from his expertise. His clients range from early-stage startups to "unicorn" technology companies like Etsy and Flipkart. He helps companies make decisions around algorithms, technology, product strategy, hiring, and organizational structure.

Click Here –> For more information about tech careers

Episode Summary

"Well it started with pretty much the people that reached out to me were trying to persuade me to take full-time jobs and I'd say, Hey, I have a better deal for you. You could just have me one day a week"

—Daniel Tunkelang

In this episode we’ll cover:

How Endeca got started? Why did the founders reach out to Daniel?
The pros and cons of being an independent contractor versus a full-time employee
What made Daniel interested in search?
Why Daniel became lost while working at Google

You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes

To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/

To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Follow Daniel Tunkelang
Twitter: @dtunkelang
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dtunkelang/

Follow Develomentor:
Twitter: @develomentor

Follow Grant Ingersoll
Twitter: @gsingers
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/grantingersoll

Support the show