Manish Karney

San Francisco Bay Area · Engineering leader

I take technology at the frontier and turn it into products that make people's lives better.Twelve years leading engineering at Google — for families, for AI, at billion-person scale.Now I'm building AI for healthcare: the highest-impact work I've found.

A principled, product-minded engineering leader. I founded the engineering behind Google Family Link — the consent-and-trust platform hundreds of millions of families rely on, and that 80+ Google products build on. I led a broad portfolio across Google's Assistant and Gemini stack — device to cloud — as one of the pillars of a 150-person org. I set the platform direction for the YouTube apps two billion people use. I go after ambitious problems where getting the technology right makes life genuinely better — and I lead the teams that ship them.

Currently
Founder — healthcare AI, in stealth
Previously
Google, 2014–2026
Based
San Francisco Bay Area

01

What I do

Three strengths, done at scale.

01

Frontier technology, made real

I take emerging, unproven technology — on-device AI, brand-new product categories — and turn it into something that works for millions. The hard part is never the demo. It's the product.

  • Gemini & Assistant, device to cloud
  • Family Link, a product category from scratch
  • AI-assisted engineering at YouTube scale

02

Products people actually use

Product-minded and user-obsessed, especially where the stakes are highest. I sweat what to build and why — and I've done it for the people who give the least slack: parents, kids, and now patients.

  • 200M+ people rely on Family Link
  • Among Google's highest-rated products
  • Gemini Live, fulfillment, on-device AI

03

Engineering leadership, hands-on to org-scale

From founding engineer writing the code to managing managers across a broad, billion-user portfolio. I build teams, set technical strategy, and lead through ambiguity, pivots, and scale.

  • Founding engineer to senior engineering leader
  • Managed managers; pillar of a 150-person org
  • Strategy adopted by hundreds of engineers

200M+

people on Family Link, which I built from 0→1

1B+

reached by the Gemini & Assistant work I led

2B+

users of the YouTube apps whose direction I set

150

person Gemini org I helped lead and calibrate

02

The toolkit

Well-rounded, by design — technical, product, and people.

Engineering

  • Android & mobile platforms
  • On-device AI & ML
  • Full-stack & backend systems
  • Distributed systems at scale
  • Reliability & production excellence
  • Privacy & safety engineering

Product & domain

  • Consumer product strategy
  • 0→1 product development
  • Trust, safety & digital wellbeing
  • Youth privacy — COPPA, GDPR
  • AI product design
  • Turning frontier tech into products

Leadership

  • Building & running orgs (25–40+)
  • Managing managers
  • Technical strategy & roadmaps
  • Executive & cross-functional influence
  • Hiring, coaching & calibration
  • Leading through ambiguity & change

04

Now

Founder, healthcare AI — taking everything I learned about shipping frontier technology responsibly to the place the stakes are highest.

The conviction is the one Family Link taught me: the technology only counts if the person it serves can trust it. So I'm building clinical AI around where a clinician stays in control — humans in the loop as a design, not a slogan, with accountability that stays with the builder. In stealth, with early clinical partners. The fuller story is on the about page.

Have an ambitious problem worth solving?

Email me ↗LinkedIn ↗

05

Field notes

Writing on the craft, ethics, and leadership behind the work.

All field notes →

05

How I work

01Start with the person, not the technology.

02The frontier only counts if it ships.

03Choose the ambitious problems on purpose.

04Impact is the only scoreboard.