Tech researcher & engineer · Östersund, Sweden

👋 Hej, I'm Elin

I'm an enthusiastic engineer drawn to the intersections of tech, design, product, organisational leadership, strategy and society. I've been an android developer, senior engineer, tech lead, tech industry researcher and incapable of staying away from improving things around me.

⚠️ Work in progress!! ⚠️ Some texts are unfinished, there's tons of design inconsistencies (I'm fascinated by the number of distinct button designs copilot decided to throw in, I'll get to them soon 🥲) but I wanted this online rather than perfect because I'm going insane. Thanks for your oversight 🙏

Work with me

Currently curious about What interesting challenges I can put my toolbox to use towards, and also how to make sense of the impact tech is having on the world right now.

Currently working on The Burnout Diaries.

A little bit serious. A little bit silly.
(copilot thought this image needed this caption. I can't decide if I hate it or love it)

A little bit about me

I like the messy middle between technology and everything else.

How I tend to work

This is how I approach almost everything I do, be that design, development, strategy, leadership, carpentry, collaboration, or figuring out fun little life hacks.

Analysis & understanding Understanding how things, systems and people work and interact, and how they ended up that way is my favourite place to start, because otherwise it's just much harder to figure out how to change and improve things. I do this from a lens of design thinking, user research, systems thinking and "artifact analysis" (e.g. looking at tech stacks, org setup, processes and what exist today).

Ideation & approaches Brainstorming and exploring solution spaces with a diverse set of perspectives and approaches is good stuff, especially when you figure out win-win situations or managing to get around problems altogether. I'm also a huge fan of contraints - put me in a box so I can figure out how to break out of it!

Prototyping & testing Since we can never know if and how something will work in practice, the best way to figure it out is to just try. Sketching, prototyping, experimenting, scaffolding and testing things in real life, with real users or teams or APIs or whathaveyou, is the best way to learn what works.

Implementation & creation Whether I'm hands-on with code, design, research, writing, or in a more hands-off, collaborative or leadershippy role, I'm usually the one who keeps a focus on simplicity, usability and understanding how everything fits together.

Pause, rinse & repeat Our world is so interesting and messy, and us humans makes it even more so. There's always gonna be new weird and interesting challenges, problems and things to do. Having room to pause, breathe and reflect is crucial for me to have the energy to understand and get excited for what's next.

Services

Ways to work with me.

I'm self-employed and looking to work with interesting people and companies. If something below sounds interesting, let's talk!

Consulting & services

I'm figuring out ways to package my toolbox and experiences, and I'm open for opportunities! Here are some things I could do for you:

Evaluation & advisor - of UX, design, strategy, codebases and tech stack, documentation, etc. I enjoy giving feedback, and I've got a good eye for detail and coherence (nitpicks always included).

Problem solving - I can help you build, design, implement, plan, research, and bring subject matter expertise to your projects, especially in phases of heavy exploration, early development and with lots of unknowns and moving parts.

Embedded analysis (or Elin analysis) - A vision I have is to build contextual understanding about challenges from within teams and organisations, so I could then help with understanding and solving problems, bottlenecks and opportunities for improvement within tech, design and leadership. Possibly like management consulting, but from a hands-on, in the weeds, ground-up kind of way.

Knowledge sharing

I enjoy sharing knowledge and insights through talks and workshops, at conferences, meetups, company events or elsewhere. I could talk about:

Developer experience and platform thinking
Learning from the tech industry
Mobile architecture and cross-platform development
The impact of technology on society
UX and design thinking

If anything around here sounds intriguing, I'd be happy to tell you all about it! In smaller settings I really like understanding the context of those listening and adapting potential learnings to their situation, and I've spoken at large and small conferences and events - I love good community and good vibes.

Work 1:1 with me

I'm not a coach, but people have enjoyed having me as an advisor, conversation partner and voice of reason around niche-ish topics I'm excited about, like:

Navigating cross-functional roles and collaboration
Growing into informal leadership and staff/+ engineering
Thinking about work, processes, goals and systems from different viewpoints and levels of abstraction
Philosophical and practical questions about the impact of technology on society
Learning and practicing creativity, design thinking and iterative problem solving
Figuring out how to work with a weird brain and navigate burnout
Finding meaning and direction through reflection

If that sounds interesting, let's chat and see what happens! First call or conversation is free, and we can figure out if it makes sense to continue.

Oooh, that sounds interesting!

Experience

A few things I've done.

Full résumé

Tech Industry Researcher

The Pragmatic Engineer · Remote

Did research, surveys and reports on the tech industry for The Pragmatic Engineer's Deep Dive newsletters, on topics like AI tooling impact, cross-platform mobile development and bug management.

2024-2026

Senior Engineer · Tech Lead

Spotify · Stockholm, Sweden

Worked with mobile feature architecture, server-driven UI, design systems and platform engineering in various teams across the company, and with technical strategy and leadership in various groups and initiatives.

2016-2023

UX Design Intern

Google Cultural Institute · London, UK

Worked on UX prototyping for the Google Cultural Institute web app, where the Entity Pages are still rolling some of my css. 👀

2015

M.Sc. in Interaction Technology and Design

Umeå Universitet · Umeå, Sweden

Studied the engineering program lovingly known as ID: half computer science, half design, usability, psychology and product development through design thinking and user testing. Was also engaged in the student union and worked one semester with course work improvement.

2011-2016

Random projects

A few things I've made.

Toolbox and interests

What I'm good at, and things I can't stop thinking about.

My toolbox of skills and abilities that I enjoy putting to good use, and interests and projects I've circled back to throughout my career.

Software development

Primarily android and web development, with some dabbling in data and backend. I particularly enjoy developing APIs, tooling and solving cross-cutting problems in elegant ways.

Communication

Writing, speaking, educating, building trust and report, and general communication skills.

UX, prototyping & user research

My formal education is in interaction design, user research, prototyping and design thinking, which are skills that served me equally well working with large-scale app architecture, platform teams and developer experience - the users simply happen to be developers and what you're designing happens to APIs and codebases.

DX, platform thinking & dev advocacy

Early adoption, alpha/beta/GA-cycles, etc.

Cross-functional collaboration

A dear colleague has referred to me as comb shaped, with a broad understanding and several areas of deeper expertise, which has let me work as a link and consolidator between tech, design, product, leadership, and the messy middle I thoroughly enjoy.

Design systems

Lorem ipsum something about design systems.

Feature flagging & A/B testing systems

I have experience designing and implementing feature flagging and A/B testing systems to enable data-driven decision making and reduce risk in product development. Especially on mobile.

User-centric product development

I'm a firm believer that a problem is not solved unless the solution actually works in practice for the people affected, which is my approach to product development. I prefer being a hands-on partner to a dedicated product manager, but will generally wear that hat or coach others to fill the role when needed.

Server-driven UI

Especially on mobile

Design thinking & analysis

As I've described in my process, something something.

Tech steering & strategy

While working at Spotify, I was very geeky about enabling others through standardisation, best practices, and shared tech strategy, and worked with tech steering groups and tech stategy.

Technical product management

I've been in positions of being a technical partner to product managers, or putting on my product hat when there hasn't been anyone else.

Project & process management

I think good habits and practices are generally easier to replicate and amplify if there's some basic structure and process in place, but not all process is necessary. There should be lagom process, and that's generally what I'm good at figuring out how to put in place.

Optimism & resilience

I'm predisposed to optimism, but I also believe it's a skill and a practice, one that I tend to spread around me and inbue in the teams and groups I work with. One person once said that I managed to "even make documentation sounds like a fun thing to work on", which might be the nicest compliment I've ever received (and also, documentation is SO GOOD!).

Personal productivity, wellness & life hacks

Systems thinking

My brain is drawn to understanding things in systems, and how things and people interact and impact eachother.

Tech philosophy

I've spent the last few years researching and philosophising about the tech industry and how it's shaping the world and society around us in positive but also very negative ways.

Writing and speaking

A few things I've shared.

More writing on Substack

Talk · Droidcon London · 2022