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Curriculum vitaeGreater Montréal, Canada

Rob Phillips.

Full-stack founder, product & engineering leader

I build products and the companies around them. Full stack in the broadest sense: founder, product, design, frontend, backend, infrastructure, marketing, recruiting, and operations. I’ve worn every hat at a startup, from shaping the product and writing code to building teams and bringing it to market. Building AI agents since 2016; first hire and later VP of Engineering at Riva Health alongside the cofounder of Siri, previously led iOS technology at Viv, and helped bring a Keepsafe rewrite to 75 million users.

Selected experience

Desiderata Labs

Jan 2023 - Present

Founder & AI Engineer

Own the full journey: product strategy, design, engineering, infrastructure, and go-to-market.

Moldable

moldable.sh

Currently building a malleable Linux operating system after creating a malleable macOS experience.

  • Product & agent platform. A local-first desktop environment where people create and reshape personal software through conversation. Durable agent execution, tool integrations, isolated workspaces, and reusable UI and app foundations.
  • Desktop, mobile & voice. Built an encrypted relay that brings apps from desktop to mobile: interfaces render on the phone while app backends run on the paired desktop. Rust/Tauri desktop, native SwiftUI companion, and realtime voice.
  • Cloud infrastructure. Account and OAuth services, file synchronization and conflict recovery, signed app releases, and shareable web artifacts, built with Rust and Cloudflare Workers, Durable Objects, D1, and R2.
  • Apps & go-to-market. An ecosystem of personal apps, including meeting transcription, language learning, calendars, and notes, supported by agent skills, a product website, and launch films.

Also building Oath, connecting experts with difficult problems in medicine and AI.

Riva Health

Dec 2020 - Jan 2023

VP of Engineering & Head of Product Development

First hire; led product and engineering from day one. Appointed VP in Jan 2022.

  • Built and led a remote engineering organization alongside the cofounder of Siri, taking smartphone blood-pressure technology from early research into sensor and patient-management products.
  • Delivered a blood-pressure sensor prototype within 3 months. Within 12 months, established secure infrastructure, patient and ML-training apps, a clinical care team, and a web app for managing patients.
  • Owned product, engineering, regulatory, quality, security, and recruiting while contributing to the core technology: on-device ML, GPU transforms, and digital signal processing.

Keepsafe

Jul 2017 - Jul 2022

Product & Engineering Consultant; Advisor to CPO / CTO

Consulting through Dec 2020; advisory role from Jul 2018 to Jul 2022.

  • Orchestrated a product rewrite and seamless rollout to 75 million users, improving usage metrics and stability. Served as interim Director of Engineering, engineering lead, iOS architect, and team mentor.
  • Combined product and design work with real-time, multi-device synchronization and just-in-time decryption, focusing on usability, privacy, and reliability.

Viv Labs

Jul 2016 - Apr 2017

Lead Product Engineer

Acquired by Samsung in Oct 2016.

  • Helped build a programmable voice agent in 2016, more than a decade ago and well before the current wave of AI agents. Led iOS technology from SDK to user experience for the assistant built by the creators of Siri, supporting complex queries across hundreds of service providers.

Luxe

Feb 2015 - Jun 2016

Product Manager & Engineering Lead

Subsequently acquired by Volvo.

  • Led product for 16 engineers and data scientists and served as iOS team lead. Delivered consumer and workforce apps spanning real-time logistics, people coordination, and demand and pricing forecasting.

Desiderata Labs

Apr 2010 - Aug 2014

Founder, Product Designer & Developer

Acquired in 2014.

  • Built iOS and Android products, including an app that reached #5 in US Sports gross sales. Owned the work from product concept and design through engineering and release.

Engineering foundations

Harris Corporation / Team Lead, Avionics

2007 - 2011

Led ruggedized electronics development. Delivered R&D prototypes in 3 weeks, helping win a multimillion-dollar contract and earning an Excellence Award.

Pratt & Whitney / Jet Engine Test Engineer

2005

Validated F135-600 STOVL engine hardware and control logic for the Joint Strike Fighter program.

Education & perspective

University of Florida

Bachelor’s, Mechanical Engineering · 2004 - 2007

Teaching assistant in thermodynamics & fluid mechanics.

Languages

English · Native
French · Professional working