About
I'm Brian, a maker and engineer who believes that ideas become things through persistent iteration and documentation.
I build things that sit at the intersection of hardware, software, and design. By day I'm a staff software engineer at tastytrade, where I lead observability for a brokerage platform. Before that I spent four years in Web3 R&D at ConsenSys Mesh co-leading Team Zero, ran infrastructure at Grand Rounds, was head of hardware at IFTTT, and scaled a Rails app past a million users at Belly. Earlier still I built clinical research platforms for the NIH and Northwestern University, flew a pool-boiling experiment on NASA reduced-gravity flights, and wired the Solar Decathlon house at Maryland. Along the way I've started a sustainable home goods company, a Palm Pilot navigation startup, and a couple of print-on-demand parts businesses.
I'm equally comfortable designing PCBs and APIs, soldering components and writing firmware, modeling enclosures and crafting user experiences. This full-stack approach lets me take projects from initial concept through prototyping, manufacturing, and fulfillment. The Work page has the professional side of that; the rest of this site is the workshop.
My work is driven by two beliefs: that learning happens through building, and that building responsibly means considering environmental impact at every stage. I prototype rapidly with whatever materials are at hand, embrace failure as part of the process, and document everything—not just the successes, but the dead ends and pivots too. Some projects become products, others become lessons. Whether I'm solving my own problems or working with clients, the goal is the same: make something real, make it well, and share what I learn along the way.
Experience
Full history on LinkedIn →- Feb 2023 – present
tastytrade
Staff Software Engineer · Chicago, IL (remote)
I lead observability for the brokerage platform: OpenTelemetry and shared metrics libraries across 30+ Ruby services, an upgrade of the core Elixir/Erlang messaging service, and the application and telemetry side of a datacenter migration.
- Jun 2020 – present
i-50
Technical Advisor · Miami, FL
Bi-weekly calls with an ML startup's engineering team on testing, architecture, and process. The fundamentals, mostly.
- Dec 2018 – Feb 2023
ConsenSys Mesh
Senior Software Engineer & Researcher · Brooklyn, NY (remote)
Co-led Team Zero, an applied R&D group building community-testable prototypes: Datapult for social image sharing on IPFS, a zero-knowledge location-privacy prototype, two first-of-their-kind NFT launches, and the Baseline protocol with Microsoft and EY.
- Mar 2016 – Dec 2018
Grand Rounds
Senior Software & Infrastructure Engineer · San Francisco, CA
Tech lead on the time-constrained, business-critical projects: EDI and SSO for the largest customers, a homebuilt CI and ephemeral-environment system on Docker Swarm, and the pager when production misbehaved.
- Sep 2014 – Mar 2016
Lucid Design Group
Product Manager, Controls & Integrations · Oakland, CA
Managed the integrations between building and utility hardware vendors and BuildingOS, helped design its public API, and planned the controls platform and a demand-response pilot.
- Jul 2013 – Jul 2014
IFTTT
Senior Software Developer, Head of Hardware · San Francisco, CA
Shipped 15 hardware channels in six months with Nest, Fitbit, Belkin, Withings, Netatmo, and others, and swapped the aging Sphinx search for Solr. The job where hobby IoT and day-job IoT were the same thing.
- May 2012 – Apr 2013
Belly
Senior Software Developer, Open Source Manager · Chicago, IL
Scaled the core Rails app from 300k to over a million users and co-built the management and monitoring system for 4,000+ in-store terminals.
- 2010
Tree Farm Creative
Founder
Designed, manufactured, and sold home goods made from renewable materials. My first go at building a brand and a marketplace.
- 2008
Northwestern University Bio-Informatics Core
Software Engineer · Chicago, IL
Patient registries, trial-monitoring systems, and a survey authoring platform for clinical research, in Rails.
- 2006
NIH Clinical Center
Software Engineer
An informed-consent authoring platform for clinical research, built in Rails back when Ajax was the exciting part.
- 2005
Ratchet Web Design
Freelance Designer & Developer
Solo web design and development for a while.
- 2000 – 2002
Guidewalk
Co-founder & Developer
A Palm Pilot navigation startup with a few friends. I built the engine that turned vector map art into interactive maps on PalmOS for nine travel guides published with Let's Go.
Education
- 2011
Northwestern University
BS, Information Systems
- 1998 – 2003
University of Maryland, College Park
Electrical Engineering
Where the Solar Decathlon house and the NASA reduced-gravity flights happened.
This Site
This site is my workshop log — a place to document the journey from initial spark to finished product. Unlike a traditional portfolio that only shows polished work, here you'll find the messy middle: the research, the failed experiments, the incremental progress.
The Process
Every project on this site follows a lifecycle:
- Ideas — Initial concepts, sketches, and inspiration
- Research — Background investigation and prior art
- Experiments — Tests, prototypes, and proof of concepts
- Projects — Active builds with documentation
- Products — Finished, polished work
Not every idea makes it to a product, and that's okay. The journey is the point.
Get in Touch
Interested in working together or have questions about a project? Feel free to reach out.