Engineering at Cursor · New York

Sam Mahdad

Declined cards. Bad measurements. Tools people actually use.

Now

Cursor

Engineering. Maker on Grok Bot.

Before

Staff → Director. Spend. Later, hiring around Travel too.

Before that

L6. Measurement, frequency capping, high QPS.

Rippling Spend · auth p99

3.5s → 600ms

Four seconds before the network kills the charge.

Card authorization · p99 vs a 4s budget

0 — 4000ms

600ms

3500ms

decline

Writing

Rippling Engineering · 2024

Auth p99: ~3.5s → 600ms. Indexes, planner hints, warmup, third-party I/O that doesn't block the rest of the request.

Recruiting, a system, or just hi. LinkedIn is fastest.