About Me
Generalist System Engineer
I have been a full stack, systems, and embedded software engineer for 30 years. When someone says "what can you do?", the honest answer is "almost anything". I specialize in not specializing: I am an technology generalist who can quickly adapt to new technologies and domains. If I don't know it already, I will learn it quickly. I have worked in industries ranging from healthcare to video games to finance to education.
Leadership
I've led multiple teams of developers, designers, sales, etc in my role as technical cofounder and/or CTO of multiple startups, as well as leading teams in larger organizations. My leadership style is collaborative and empowering, focused on bringing out the best in each team member, while ensuring we meet our goals effectively and efficiently.
Domains of Expertise
Full-Stack Web Development
30 years building everything from early e-commerce platforms to modern web applications. I've worked across the entire stack and can jump into any part of your system.
- Frontend: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Vue, React, Tailwind
- Backend: Ruby/Rails, Node.js, PHP, Python, ASP.NET, Elixir/Phoenix
- I can build it, fix it, or lead the team doing it
Data Engineering & Architecture
26 years designing databases, data pipelines, and analytics systems. I've built data infrastructure for everything from the UN to enterprise data warehouses capturing decades of historical data.
- Database design & optimization
- ETL pipelines & data lakes (BigQuery, Snowflake)
- SQL, data modeling, analytics systems
Product Design & UX
I'm a developer who actually understands users. I've built products people love by combining technical implementation with human-centered design. This combination has been a key success metric for many products.
- User research & product design
- Interface design & prototyping
- Technical implementation of design systems
Technical Leadership
I've led engineering teams and served as CTO for multiple startups. I know how to build teams, set technical direction, and translate between business needs and technical execution.
- CTO & technical strategy
- Team building & mentorship
- Architecture decisions & technical roadmaps
Game Engine Development
Worked on many AAA games at the system level, including a near-complete Xbox 360 rewrite of idTech 3, the Lua-based quest system in Mercenaries 2, a production ActionScript 2 game engine, and multiple Rock Band platforms. I understand high performance, memory management, algorithms, and multi-platform low-level systems.
- Engine architecture & design
- C/C++, performance optimization
- Unity experience
DevOps & Infrastructure
Set up and maintain the systems that keep applications running. From Linux servers to Docker containers to cloud deployments, I can build and manage your infrastructure (though you'll want a focused system administrator to handle day-to-day ops).
- Linux system administration
- Docker, CI/CD, deployment automation
- Cloud infrastructure & monitoring
Technology
Tools & Frameworks
- HTML
- CSS
- Vue 2/3
- JavaScript
- TypeScript
- SQL
- Photoshop
- Figma
- Tailwind
- React
- Node.js
- Ruby
- Rails
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Other common technologies and tools I have experience with:
Frontend
Backend
Systems
Infrastructure
Design
Technical Highlights
Custom Linux Audio / Electron Kiosk System
For a client's interactive kiosk system, on a shoestring budget, I created a custom Linux-based OS that booted directly into a secure Electron app kiosk, featuring:
- Surround sound (surprisingly difficult on Linux)
- Automatic cloud updates
- Remote device management
- Advanced audio engine handling multiple overlapping tracks with smooth crossfading and pausing
Rewrite of an internal banking administration system
A large bank's recently developed internal administration system was buggy, insecure, and very slow. The original contractor team took 6 months to build it (estimated at 1 month). I completely rewrote it from scratch in 2 weeks, delivering:
- Dramatically improved performance
- No obvious critical security vulnerabilities (SQL injection, client-only validation)
- Much more intuitive user interface
- Built in ASP.net with proper architecture
Custom Xbox 360 file packaging system
Microsoft's secure file system for signing XBOX packages was slow and not very secure. I created a custom file packaging system that delivered:
- Reduced load times from ~45 seconds to <8 seconds
- Intelligent file data distribution
- Hand-tuned custom compression to minimize file size
- Greatly reduced chance of hacking
Multiple Continuous Integration and Automated Testing Tools
For multiple projects I created custom automated testing, building, and continuous integration tools that delivered:
- Security auto-attacks (SQL injection, timing overflows, unusual user behaviors)
- Customizable automated testing procedures scriptable by non-programmers
- Cross-platform asset packaging and management
- Worked for both web and games (uncommon at the time)
Spec-complete, feature enhanced ActionScript 2 interpreter in C++
While working with a AAA-game engine in C++ with a strict no-third-party-libraries policy, I wrote a complete ActionScript 2 interpreter to enable Flash as a UI design environment, with:
- Spec-complete implementation with enhanced features
- Thread/process-safe asynchronous updates
- Fully automated spec test suite self-written in ActionScript
- Extensive game-enhanced UIComponent library for Flash artists
- Enabled rapid UI creation for current and future titles
Predictive Asset Loading and Render Buffering Pipeline in ActionScript 2
To make a Facebook game look more impressive than anyone had seen with high-resolution sprites and extensive animation frames, I built an advanced rendering system featuring:
- Asset manager that intelligently predicted texture usage
- Automatic pre-caching and unloading in partial real-time
- Custom asset buffering and rendering pipeline optimized for Flash
- Pre-compiler for automatic optimization
- Allowed artists to maximize creativity while system handled performance
Personal Attributes
Strengths
- Predicting failure outcomes and spotting "gap problems", then writing code or guiding the process/team to avoid them. As a result, I have a lot of experience in code/process optimization, robustness, and security.
- Data architecture, file systems, resource allocation, optimization, loading, and caching. I absolutely love resources and huge datasets.
- Starting projects and preparing foundational design and architecture for others to come along and build on top of.
- Designing frameworks and tools for empowering programmers (or others) to do better work and/or make their lives easier.
- Leadership methods that produce optimal steady output from creative teams over long periods of time that doesn't involve crunch hours or dehumanizing practices. Six months into a project my teams work better and happier, not worse and sad from burn out. People love working for me.
- A strong work ethic, focused on getting things done because they need doing. I am known for focusing for long periods of time on single tasks without getting fatigued or bored.
- Doing things right the first time, so no one ever has to do them again, while also doing it quickly.
- Product design, particularly in human interactions. I can accurately judge how people will feel using software and create/enhance designs to optimize for the human experience.
- Much to the chagrin of some teams, I am very good at finding bugs and breaking things.
Weaknesses
- Working with low-experienced developers on a production team: a previous manager said that I am excellent at taking the 80-100% and getting 150% out of them, but not great at reaching below that 80% to bring them up. I work best with other experienced developers. However, I love teaching students who are new to development.
- 2D/3D visual math, particularly geometry. Despite my strong math skills in other areas, I have never clicked with spatial math. Thankfully, this is rarely relevant, and even then most modern engines handle this for us.
- I can organize myself, and I can create great plans for teams, but I am not a project manager and I do not do well keeping track of all minor daily details of the moving pieces of a large project. I work exceptionally well when paired with a strong project manager who can handle the logistics of keeping the day-to-day details straight, while I focus on the technical strategy, architecture, and team leadership.
- Getting the best work out of me involves putting me ahead of others on projects doing the foundation, predictive problem-solving, and pioneering work. I can definitely do maintenance work and long-tail end of project bug fixing, but my strongest gifts lie in the pre-planning and early implementation phases of projects where I can scaffold the best path forward for others to follow.
Testimonials
“I could always count on Brian to do what was necessary to get the job done. He also has a very forward thinking approach and was able to predict and avoid many pitfalls.”
“It's not only a personal pleasure to work with Brian, but he's also a superb software engineer and natural team leader. Brian is able to very effectively look ahead and foresee development issues long before they were apparent and would always lead the charge from the front. Brian has an excellent work ethic and invests himself in his work like few others I've known. For this reason I consider Brian to be one of the best team leaders I've worked with and I look forward to working with Brian again. He comes with my absolute highest recommendations.”
“I had the pleasure of working on a team led by Brian at Pi Studios. Brian displayed a great aptitude both for solving complex technical problems and explaining relevant details of his solutions in a clear and concise manner. Brian kept the project on track without making his team members feel micromanaged, fostering creativity and encouraging everyone to provide input for important decisions. Furthermore, Brian took any available opportunity to help members of his team learn new skills that they could apply to the project, and I found his guidance invaluable on many occasions. Regardless of the situation, Brian was always open, approachable, and eager to do whatever he could to ensure the completion of tasks, making it easy to hash out development issues whenever the need arose. Working with Brian was a very rewarding experience and I would be happy to have the opportunity to do so again.”