Will O'Brien Email & Phone Number

Tricked into a computer science degree at a very young age. https://xkcd.com/353/Software engineering is my first and favorite hammer; sometimes, still, everything looks like a nail. Which is a tricky attitude to have 'cause then you got all this software.------------A software engineer at heart. Simple solutions that sidestep potentially unbounded complexity fascinate me.¹ To that end, I work hard to create clear, bright boundary lines in the projects I join.I first met Computer Science as a freshman at Colby College. It was a quick sell for the department. By the end of my second year you could find me sprawled out in my dorm floor, re-appropriating discarded hospital workstations for use as linux servers.My professional involvement has been in small-team ventures for a mix of software applications -- startups to enterprises. With a strong software background, it was easy to catch the infrastructure-as-code wave. The common denominator has been software systems running in AWS or GCP. As I've been pulled into larger and more nuanced projects, my time has become best spent on infrastructure design and equipping teams to solve scaling issues ahead of critical breaking points -- both at an application and organizational level. Most of my energy and motivation comes from my excitement to work alongside folks who have a deep intuition about their tools. They know exactly how their tools can and ought to be used. Any chance to learn a few good cuts from them is invaluable and always feels like play.Professional work aside, I am fascinated by operations research, accounting, experiment design, project portfolio management, financial planning and analysis, combinatorics, graph theory, bayesian stats, systems thinking, feedback loops.. and on and on. All have something to say about what 'better' might look like. It's my excuse to explore new languages, databases, and libraries. If you're at all in the space, please reach out. I'd love to connect :)------------¹ As an aside, If you've not read the opening chapter of Saltzer & Kaashoek's "Principles of Computer System Design", it's very well worth the read. If you are reading this and we work together, message me, I'll mail you a copy!

Listed skills include Git, Java, Javascript, Ruby On Rails, and 9 others.

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  Colby College

  Computer Science