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Brian Dawn
AWS, C++, CDK, Clojure, Docker, DuckDB, Git, Golang, Haskell, Kotlin, Nix, Postgres, OpenCV, Polars, Python, React, Rust, SQLite, Terraform, Typescript, Unix, Zig
About

A polyglot programmer who likes static typecheckers, infrastructure as code, and small well defined systems.

Addium
May 2024 - Present
R&D Lead

Managed and lead a cross discipline R&D team consisting of computer vision, machine learning, and data science.

More coming soon...

Addium
Dec 2022 - May 2024
Principal Software Engineer

Worked on integration of Farm Vision IP into Pometa, a crop load management tool.

Worked on building an iOS version of the previous Farm Vision application with support for the iPhone pro LiDAR sensor to remove a need for an external depth camera.

Assisted with internal engineering leadership.

Farm Vision Technologies
July 2017 - Dec 2022
Chief Technology Officer

Designed, wrote, and iterated on product from the ground up to help fruit growers estimate their crop yields prior to harvest.

Work included an Android app to facilitate data collection, a full stack app for data upload/viewing, and a horizontally scaleable computer vision and machine learning data processing pipeline.

All code was built using proper CI/CD practices and all infrastructure defined in code with a careful balance toward maintaining high velocity.

Asssisted with overall business direction, grant proposal writing, and business plans. Company was acquired by Addium (branched from METER Group) near the end of 2022.

Kidblog
Mar 2016 - July 2017
Senior Software Engineer

Backend engineer position at a small company working on a very large Clojure codebase handling features, bugs, and performance tuning.

Worked with distributed systems such as Hazelcast and Elasticsearch to enable better response times in our webapp.

Took on a leadership role in bringing CI/testing methodologies to the team.

Designed and facilitated a large data model change enabling new business features with net code deletion.

Clojurebridge
Dec 2014 - Jan 2020
Volunteer

Volunteer for the ClojureBridge Minnesota Chapter. Wrote and taught curriculum for both experienced and new programmers.

Code42
Apr 2014 - Nov 2015
Software Engineer

Implemented features, security improvements, SQL optimizations, and REST API additions against large Java server application.

Architected an automated acceptance test suite in Ruby that grew to see usage amongst engineering/QA and later became integrated with CI pipeline.

Seagate
Jul 2013 - Mar 2014
Firmware Engineer

Worked primarily in C and Python maintaining a cacheing mechanism hard drives use to save data during emergency power outages. Had to debug issues relating to firmware and hardware.

QLogic Corporation
Jul 2012 - Jun 2013
Firmware Engineer

Developed test platforms in Python to test FibreChannel switches. Worked on Firmware which was built atop a Linux stack in userspace using BusyBox.

Augsburg University
Jul 2010 - Jun 2012
Researcher

Designed, developed, and maintained a data acquisition and graphing system for the PENGUIn Antarctic Research Project. The work involved communicating with unmanned antarctic research stations via an Iridium satellite modem, data gathering, graphing, processing, and backup. Work was presented at UC Berkeley, and at MICS in 2012.

Worked on a research project that gathered atmospheric spectral data using a suborbital payload that went aboard a rocket. Wrote the firmware and built the circuitry for the payload.

Education
Sep 2008 - May 2012
Augsburg College
  • B.S. Computer Science
  • B.A. Physics
  • Minor Mathematics
  • Honors in Computer science
  • Physics Honor Society - Sigma Pi Sigma
  • Overall GPA: 3.45