1. brandon black
Software Engineer
2234 3rd
St #E511
San Francisco, CA 94107
p. (650) 257-0111
e. brandonmblack@gmail.com
Summary
I am a senior-level software engineer with an excellent palette of knowledge and experience. I’m
seeking a challenging opportunity to work with other equally passionate individuals in an
environment where my skills can make a considerable impact.
I possess excellent communication skills both written and verbal, and I am very enthusiastic and
supportive about open-source software and the open-source community.
Experience
10gen, Inc.
Palo Alta, CA (September 2012 to Present)
Software Engineer
• Asked to join 10gen, the makers of MongoDB, as a member of the ruby driver team
where my primary responsibility was to maintain the official ruby client for MongoDB.
The ruby team itself is small, but part of a larger driver team composed of technology
experts and major open-source contributors from all over the world, representing nearly
every major language and technology.
• In addition to my code contributions, my duties and accomplishments included helping
organize and lead the team, mentoring more junior members of the team, design and
implementation of an all new ruby driver, planning our release roadmap and improving
our release cycle, test coverage and overall productivity.
• A key part of the role also involved working closely and collaborating with other
members of the MongoDB ruby community external from 10gen (e.g. Mongoid,
MongoMapper). In some cases I worked with these project owners as direct members of
my team and in other cases it was a much more loosely defined collaboration.
Contributing to the open-source community in both code and support was a large part
of my responsibility and strongly encouraged by the leadership at 10gen.
• Along side my primary role as a key maintainer for the ruby driver, my role was also that
of a developer advocate to help further the open-source community around MongoDB
as well as the ruby community in general. My contributions here included organizing
local meetups, blogging on MongoDB’s official blog and numerous conference talks
(RailsConf, LA Dev Week, MongoDB Developer Days).
• I also regularly assisted with on-site customer consults and support engagements, led
public and non-public MongoDB training sessions, helped construct MongoDB
educational materials and helped provide technical reviews and content updates for
MongoDB related books and publications.
Related Links:
http://www.10gen.com
http://www.mongodb.org

2. Facebook
Menlo Park, CA (April 2011 to September 2012)
Software Engineer
• Brought on-board to lead a small group of developers and help spin up a team to build
mobile and Ruby-based internal tools for Facebook. These tools were designed to
service both employee and business needs. However, my day-to-day development
involved many technologies including: Java, PHP, JavaScript, Ruby and Python.
• Released several high profile projects within the company and held regular tech talks
with my team to help advance their knowledge of Ruby and mobile application
development. These included HR, finance, and several highly visible direct-to-employee
projects.
• Helped establish a number of processes and guidelines for this new development team
including development and deployment workflows, best practices for authentication
and security, and our own mini-web framework designed to take care of boilerplate
code for our internal applications.
• Single-handedly designed and implemented an HTML 5 based, data-driven campus
mapping system which pulled its data directly from a variety of data sources through a
deep integration with AutoCAD, Microsoft Exchange, ActiveDirectory, Facebook’s
Graph API and a system of motion sensors throughout the campus. This system served
as a vital campus service for finding people and meeting spaces and received much
acclaim.
• Designed and implemented an HTTP-based, REST API back-end that enabled dozens
of systems and tools to interact with our meeting and map related data. This API served
as a central authority for managing over a thousand room resources, it helped
streamline personnel moves, and gave us unprecedented insight into how best to
optimize the usage of many high-demand campus resources.
• Designed and maintained a system of touchscreen kiosks and digital signage for the
mapping system that were installed all throughout Facebook’s 11-building Menlo Park
campus and many of the international campuses. In additional to configuring and
assembling the hardware systems on-site, I developed a series of internal tools and
automated processes to aid in monitoring and administration of the entire system.
Related Links:
http://www.facebook.com
MeLLmo, Inc.
Del Mar, CA (October 2009 to April 2011)
Senior Software Developer
• Acted as the primary engineer leading all phases of several key strategic projects
including our subscription based eCommerce integration with Reg.net for payment
processing and our product licensing API, implementation of Google’s OpenID single
sign-on and Google Docs API, integration with Google Marketplace and the Google
Licensing API, and also Roambi’s integration with the Endeca data engine.
• Assisted in the construction of our own internally built Ruby-based web framework using
Sinatra, JRuby, Erubis, and JQuery. Championed an effort to modernize the Flash/Flex
data visualizations using cutting edge web technologies.

3. • Key in a company effort to build out a front-end team by assisting in educating several
of our in-house graphics designers on the use of HTML5, CSS3, and JQuery and
assisted in the construction and maintenance of the CSS framework that the design
team would later be responsible for.
• Implemented the mobile, web-based login UI as well as an OAuth (and later OAuth
2.0) API for Roambi’s mobile clients to use in order to handle user authentication with
Roambi server on the device and provide means to easily and remotely revoke access
for lost or stolen devices.
• Worked very closely with the mobile client teams to develop an entirely new stealthy,
yet-to-be-released product for the company that makes heavy use of semantic HTML5
markup. I served in an advisory/mentor role for the other members of the team the
team, and also built out a Ruby-based API for the server component of the project.
• Daily duties consist of core product work in Ruby/JRuby, however I also played a key
role in production support for our cloud-hosted offering on Amazon EC2 with a
MySQL database backend. In that role I helped train the other members of the IT team
and taught them how to migrate their maintenance, backup, and deployment scripts
from bash to Ruby.
• I was also responsible for the development of several internal web-based tools used by
the finance and customer support teams to process payments, make user account
changes, and perform basic system administration.
Related Links:
http://www.roambi.com
MySpace.com, Inc.
Beverly Hills, CA (December 2007 to October 2009)
Senior Software Developer
• A lead member of several critical teams and MySpace initiatives including a core role
on the MySpace Developer Platform. Instrumental in the delivery and upkeep of several
major products including MySpace’s many open standards initiatives such as the
OpenSocial application platform, OAuth implementation, and RESTful APIs.
• Served as both a team-lead and SCRUM Master for several teams concurrently while
working at MySpace. It was part of my regular duties to lead daily stand-ups and
planning meetings, and to help resolve impediments for my teammates to keep them
working and trouble free. These teams were considered to be the best of the best at
MySpace and were very influential throughout MySpace’s entire engineering team.
• As team lead, I also had a very close working relationship with the MySpace Developer
Platform’s business development team. My attendance was regularly required at
director-level meetings as well as meetings with strategic external partners for the
platform.
• I was also key in product planning meetings and was regularly asked to attend and assist
in breaking down product tasks into engineering tasks and provide work estimates for
my teams.
• Personally responsible for the development of several key components of the MySpace
Developer Platform including portions of the user home page, user profile page, user
privacy-settings and application permissions, and the MySpace login page.

4. • Key part of the launch of MySpaceID, which is MySpace’s OpenID implementation
paired with OAuth APIs for accessing user data. My responsibilities included API
development and maintenance and contributing to the MySpaceID SDKs across a
number of different languages including PHP, Ruby, Java and C#.
• I had a significant role in the development of the MySpaceID JavaScript SDK, which
included portions of the login flow, and functionality that allowed developers to post
user activities into MySpace using only client script.
• Other duties at MySpace included partner and developer community support, design
and documentation, and production support. I was a regular initial go-to for our network
operations team whenever there was trouble with the platform in production.
• I became passionate about working in Ruby in January of 2009 while still at MySpace
and I led efforts to bring more Ruby into the engineering team there. I was able to
contribute to the MySpaceID SDK in Ruby some, but eventually left the company
voluntarily in the fall of 2009 to pursue a full-time work in Ruby.
Related Links:
http://www.myspace.com
http://developer.myspace.com
DoctorDirectory.com, Inc.
Asheville, NC (Spring 2005 to December 2007)
Software Developer/Database Analyst
• Lead software developer in a fast moving company with a focus on a team environment.
• Responsibilities included full life-cycle development, design and implementation of Web-
based Applications, Desktop Applications, Web Services and Distributed Applications
using C# and .NET 2.0 and 3.0.
• Was key in the design and implementation of many of the company’s top priority
projects and programs including a rich and interactive web based eLearning platform
for physicians as well as an online eSample platform.
• Daily duties included quickly transforming internal and client application requirements
into robust, scalable solutions with a strong emphasis on object oriented design (OOD),
loosely coupled systems of software and data, and best practices for database and
software design and implementation.
• Other duties included: Help desk & technical support, network and server administration
(SQL Server, Windows Server 2003, Exchange Server), database design and analysis,
and legacy application support.
Related Links:
http://www.doctordirectory.com
http://www.increaserx.com
LeTourneau University (Biomedical Engineering Team)
Longview, TX (Spring 2004 to Spring 2005)
Research Lab Technical Support/Software Developer
• Worked full-time with the biomedical research team at LeTourneau University as they
performed grant funded research with a focus on the use of robotics for limb
replacement.

5. • Required to be on call at all times and responsible for the maintaining the integrity of
the team’s weekly data backups as well as the lab equipment and any other technical
issues the team came across.
• Provided general help desk and technical support, troubleshooting hardware and
software systems, maintaining lab computers and equipment, and maintaining network
support for the team.
• Responsible for launching and maintaining a web-based platform that allowed the
researchers to capture their findings and log their results in a collaborative manner.
Diamond Brand Outdoors
Arden, NC (July 1997 to December 2004)
Information Technology/Database Analyst
• Worked both full-time and seasonally under contract with a prominent outdoor retail
store and manufacturing plant in Western North Carolina.
• Responsible for general customer service, help desk and technical support, network
maintenance and administration, computer hardware and software repair, computer
training for other employees, web store maintenance and administration, and graphical
design.
• Responsible for maintaining databases for customer and vendor information and
inventory management for both the retail store and the manufacturing plant.
Related Links:
http://www.diamondbrand.com
LeTourneau University (Student Services/Career Services)
Longview, TX (Fall 2001 to Spring 2005)
Web Design/Technical Support
• Provided web development and general technical support to the Career Services and
Student Services departments at LeTourneau University.
• Duties included preparing local campus announcements, web development and
maintenance, and general computer support for the department staff
• Provided technical support and consultation at various events such as campus career
fairs and on-campus employer interviews.
Education
Computer Science and Information Systems, B.S.
LeTourneau University
Longview, TX
Educational Highlights - Biomedical Engineering Team, Phoenix Project (Unmanned Arial Vehicle),
HPV Team (Human Powered Vehicle), Longview Blitz Community Service Work.

6. Skills
Languages
C#, Ruby/JRuby, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, Java, C, PHP, C/C++, Go, Rust
Frameworks
Rails, Sinatra, Cucumber, RSpec, Jasmine, Capybara, Node.js, JQuery, Modernizer, Paper.js,
Selenium Web-Driver, Celluloid, Sidekiq
Software
Microsoft Visual Studio, Eclipse, Sublime Text, TextMate, JEdit, IIS 5/6/7, Nginx, Apache, Tomcat
6/7, Glassfish, SQL Server, Passenger, Puma, MySQL, Postgres, SQLLite, Amazon SimpleDB,
Amazon EC3, Amazon S3, Git, Subversion, Mercurial, Jenkins
Platforms, Standards, Environments & Other Technologies
OpenSocial, OAuth, OpenID, RESTful Web Services, Windows 98/2000/XP/Vista/Win
7/2003/2008, Mac OS X, iPhone SDK 2.0/3.0/4.0, MSDOS, RedHat, Ubuntu, .NET Framework
(2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0), LINQ, ADO .NET, SQL Reporting Services, Crystal Reports
Current Interests
Ruby/JRuby, Rails, Sinatra, MongoDB, HTML5, Machine Learning and Natural Language
Processing, Go-lang, Scala
References
Available upon request and on LinkedIn.