Character.AI
Growth and monetization features for a conversational AI platform with ~15.5M monthly active users, across mobile and web.
- Role
- Senior Product Engineer
- Year
- 2026
- Tech stack
- React Native
- TypeScript
- CI/CD
- CodeQL
The work
I'm a full-stack and mobile product engineer at Character.AI, a leading conversational AI platform with roughly 15.5M monthly active users. I drive user-facing growth features and the monetization and platform infrastructure behind them.
Highlights
- CAI+ upsell in onboarding. A subscription offer shown right after users finish onboarding. It drove thousands in additional monthly subscription revenue (+XX% gross)**, one of the biggest monetization wins of the year.
- Following tab. A dedicated discovery feed for the creators you follow: +XX.XX% following activity and +XX.XX% more users following creators.
- Recent Chat Tabs, block/unblock, Character Boost and Character Preset Wallpapers, across mobile and web.
- CI/CD overhaul, cutting build times by more than half.
The numbers behind it
- CAI+ upsell: measured over a two-month experiment. Activation rates held steady and renewal and retention cohorts tracked in line with existing subscribers, for a negligible (-0.44%) DAU trade-off.
- Following tab: besides the engagement gains, active subscribers grew XX.XX%.
- Recent Chat Tabs: quick navigation between recent conversations, liked characters and owned characters. It set the pattern for tab-based navigation that later features follow.
- Block/unblock: built end to end: the backend integration, the full user path on mobile and web, and the analytics instrumentation.
- Character Preset Wallpapers: more personalization options, which increased user activation.
- Build infrastructure: cold-start builds are about 57% faster and warm-start builds about 82% faster. I also refactored the CodeQL security-scanning pipeline, cutting its runtime by 61%.