Michael Thelen
Senior Software Engineer, YouTube Player Infrastructure at Google
Newton, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolMichael Thelen is a senior software engineer with 21 years of experience, currently improving YouTube's player infrastructure on iOS at Google. He combines deep C/C++ and Objective-C/Swift expertise with pragmatic multi-language fluency, preferring the right tool for the job and writing human-friendly, maintainable code. Michael has led teams, mentored engineers, and shipped mobile and cross-platform products—ranging from commercial apps to the widely used Zyzzyva Scrabble tool he created and supports worldwide. He has a strong background in NLP and machine-learning-enabled text parsing from earlier research and industry roles, and a track record of shipping high-quality, testable code under tight timelines. Detail-oriented and accuracy-driven, he also brings a personable leadership style that lifts team morale—and in his spare time ranks among the top Scrabble players in North America.
21 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
The University of UtahBachelor of Arts (B.A.), Computer Science, Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Computer Science at Hope College
English, French, German, Japanese
Stackoverflow
77reputation
17kreached
1answer
0questions
Github Skills (6)
scrabble10
git6
afnetworking4
boggle3
oauth2
authentication2
Programming languages (2)
Github contributions (5)
boshvark/zyzzyva-pc
Nov 2004 - Apr 2014
Contributions:2994 commits in 9 years 7 months
boshvark/word-scripts
May 2016 - Feb 2026
Contributions:13 pushes, 1 branch in 9 years 10 months
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