Willie Wang on Crypto, Building Great User Experiences and More

“Engineering Leaders Q&A” is a blog series featuring interviews with engineering leaders. Learn about engineering leaders’ projects, passions, top challenges and more. In this post, we interview Willie Wang, VP Engineering at Abra.

Tell us about Abra?

Abra is an all-in-one crypto wallet that lets you trade hundreds of crypto assets, earn interest on USD stablecoins or crypto assets, and borrow against your crypto assets. 

What’s your role at Abra?

I am VP Engineering at Abra where we have a great team building products that help people conquer the complex world of crypto. We want to make crypto simple and easy.

Note: Abra hosts a podcast called “Abra Money Talks.” Here’s a recent episode:

What are some engineering challenges your team is tackling?

We are still in the early stages of the crypto revolution. Therefore, users are required to have more technical knowledge to gain the benefit of crypto. We want to build a user experience that simplifies and automates, in an intelligent way, all the various steps involved in investing in crypto and DeFi.

Note: Willie was a panelist in our recent event, “Why Web3 Matters: Decentralization, Democratizing Access, Play-to-Earn Models and More.” Watch a recording of the event:

When hiring for your team, do you look for prior experience in crypto or fintech?

Because Crypto is relatively new, we are looking for great developers. Prior experience in crypto or fintech is not necessary. We do want engineers who believe in crypto and have a passion for the industry. 

What work model do you employ: remote, in-person, hybrid?

As a Product Development team, the majority of our developers have always been remote. Therefore, remote work has always been part of our culture. At this point, Abra is a remote-first company, not just in product development, but the whole company.  

How do you partner with Lohika?

Lohika helps us scale our product development teams faster. We like the cohesiveness of sourcing a whole team to be focused on a new product development effort. 

Watch this video to see how Lohika can help scale your engineering team:

What’s one hobby you’d like to do more of?

Skiing ⛷️