Andrew Crookston
Engineering leader who builds AI-native products fast and runs the teams that do | Technology strategy · Product builder · Founder to VP
Stockholm, Sweden · Swedish & English (both native)
andrew@crookston.se ·
andrewcrookston.com ·
LinkedIn ·
GitHub
Summary
Engineering leader who still builds. Twenty years of building software and the teams that build it. I set technology strategy, I ship product with my own hands, and I run the teams that do both.
The arc runs founder to VP: co-founded a profitable consumer startup in San Francisco, built Spotify’s Car Mode for 50M+ users, and most recently led engineering at Doktor.se, a Swedish healthtech preparing for IPO. There the job was strategy with consequences: a 30M SEK budget cut by 6 to 8M a year, four platforms consolidated into one, an org-wide AI adoption programme, and disconnected teams rebuilt into one organisation.
I never stopped building. In the past year, on the side of the VP role, I shipped four products with AI agents writing most of the code. I know what the new way of building looks like from the inside, and what it takes to run a team that works that way.
Work Experience
Doktor.se
- Sole technical leader through several leadership transitions. Set the technology strategy and owned it with the executive team; contributed the engineering view to board materials
- Owned the 30M SEK engineering budget (20M staff, 10M infrastructure); cut 6 to 8M a year through staffing changes, replacing expensive technical choices and renegotiating vendor fees
- Restructured disconnected teams into a “One Engineering Org” model with autonomous squads, a squad lead framework and advisory forums
- Ran an org-wide AI adoption programme: mandatory AI-assisted development, workshops, tooling, and an interview process redesigned for the AI era
- Led the AI health-assistant work (triage, anamnesis): a model-agnostic AI service on EU-hosted infrastructure, built with GDPR and the AI Act in scope
- Led multi-platform consolidation (Doktor.se, Maja.no, Doktor24.se, Kollarna.se), including build-versus-buy calls, with care quality and compliance intact
- The biggest lever: an 80/20 consultant-to-FTE imbalance, taken to near 100% in-house through managed vendor transitions and hiring
- Identified an over-engineered infrastructure platform, hired DevOps talent and led the refactor, with savings still growing
- Contributed technical documentation and reporting to IPO due-diligence preparation
Lifesum — Tech Lead / Engineering Manager
Led and mentored an iOS team of five. Drove key technical projects and partnered with Apple and the product team on the roadmap.
Spotify — Senior Lead iOS Consultant (via Digitalent)
Built Car Mode, Spotify’s in-car experience, reaching 50M+ users. Delivered the proof of concept that set the direction for a car-friendly version of the whole app.
Kry — Senior iOS Consultant (via Digitalent)
Improved the UI framework and CI/CD for the patient-facing iOS app.
Digitalent — Mobile Business Area Lead
Led the mobile practice: mentoring, teaching and recruiting.
Instacart — Senior iOS Engineer
Shipped earnings redesign, drive-in pickup and on-demand scheduling. Re-architected the app for testability. Redesigned parts of the hiring process and ran hundreds of technical interviews.
Throwdown Labs Inc. — Co-founder & CTO
Built two fitness iOS apps from scratch, backend included. Keelo was profitable in its first year and featured on the App Store front page. Throwdown needed advanced video rendering and algorithmic matching.
Muzy Inc. — Software Engineer, Product & Growth
Built Muzy (#8 in the App Store Photo category) and Hello (custom SMS/MMS for early Android). Spotted early mobile traffic trends and pushed the company mobile-first. Designed and ran 50+ A/B tests.
Blogg Esse AB — Development Manager (CTO)
Took over a failing iOS project and delivered it. Brought the platform to profitability for the first time. Sweden’s 7th most visited website: 1M accounts, 3M uniques, 44M page views a week.
Earlier Roles
Freelance · CA Systems (2005–2012) · Systems Developer Consultant · Athega AB (2010–2011) · System Architect / Lead Developer · Newsline Group (2007–2010) · System Developer · The PAR Group (2006–2007) · Web Developer · Bisnode AB (2005–2006) · System Developer · Affärsdata AB (2003–2004)
Building with AI
Four products shipped in under a year, on the side of a full-time VP role, with AI agents writing most of the code. Several more prototypes were built and dropped along the way; that is the method, not the exception. Where a product is paused, the reason is on the blog.
Lotsa — Open-source platform for orchestrating fleets of AI coding agents: spec-driven tasks, sandboxed execution, pipelines. Built and dogfooded; paused when the frontier labs shipped the same ideas. lotsa.dev
Runepad — Minimal markdown editor for macOS. Released, in beta, in daily use. runepad.com
Lumural — Free design and whiteboard tool with real-time multiplayer, a Figma and Miro alternative for non-designers. Live; development paused as AI reshapes the category. lumural.com
Retrotime — Retrospective tool for engineering teams. Live and free to use. retrotime.dev
Writing — A practitioner's view of agentic coding ("From Prompting to Orchestrating"), engineering leadership, and build-versus-buy. Growing readership, mostly engineering leaders. andrewcrookston.com
Skills
Leadership and strategy
Technology strategy at executive level · Org design and scaling · AI adoption and transformation · AI products in regulated environments (GDPR, AI Act, NIS2) · Build versus buy · Budget ownership and cost optimisation · Executive and board communication · Technical hiring · Change management · Mentoring and coaching
Building
Agentic coding and AI agent orchestration · Full-stack architecture · Cloud and EU sovereign infrastructure · Platform migration and consolidation · DevOps, CI/CD and observability · Security and compliance · Mobile (iOS, Android) · Product and UX sense · Open source
Languages and frameworks
Swift, TypeScript, Python, Ruby, Kotlin · SwiftUI, React, Node.js, Rails, FastAPI · PostgreSQL, SQL
Tools
Claude Code, Codex, Cursor · Hetzner, Scaleway, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes · Git, Figma, Linear
Education
Submarine Fleet Radio Operator · Swedish Navy (2003–2005) — Highest-tier conscription. Classified communications, submarine fleet. Security clearance. Leadership training.
National Technology Program · Cybergymnasiet (2001–2003) — C++, Java, systems administration.
EPiServer Developer Cert (2007) · C# .NET (2007) · Java (2005)