# Chris B. > Philosophical Nerd Location: Pacifica, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/chrisb I build platforms that enable business velocity. I connect the business priorities with day to day engineering of my team. Focus on and interest in utilizing technology in smart and effective ways to increase productivity. I have a fascination with joy of solving Hard Problems. Specialties: Scala, Java, Rust, Systems Architecture, Platform development and management, Data Modeling, Data Management, MySQL, Experimentation, Iterative Development, high performance team building. ## Work Experience ### Staff Software Engineer @ Halcyon Jan 2024 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area Built and launched alerting system that became primary driver of customer engagement and retention, optimizing for highly iterative feedback loop - Advanced ML infrastructure stack (Triton inference, RAG optimization, evaluation workflows) to improve performance and iteration speed - Solved high-complexity data ingestion challenges across fragmented government sources, unlocking new datasets for product expansion ### Lead Software Engineer @ Banyan Infrastructure Jan 2023 – Jan 2024 | San Francisco Bay Area - Architected aggregator-based integration platform, redesigning pipeline into a mapping-driven system (API ingestion + model mapping), reducing onboarding effort ~90% - Reframed integration strategy to eliminate bespoke builds, collapsing a multi-year roadmap into delivery within months ### Staff Software Engineer @ Webflow Jan 2023 – Jan 2023 | San Francisco Bay Area Ecosystem Backend - Built Error Handling framework for public API - Drove migration of CMS API - Created Strategy for Increasing Development Velocity ### Staff Software Engineer @ Twitter Jan 2013 – Jan 2022 | San Francisco Revenue Diversity Identified and incubated subscription monetization approach; led backend development of Twitter Blue enabling production launch within ~1 week of directive I work as a leader in the portfolio of projects aimed at diversifying revenue streams and building additional business models for Twitter Unblocked the on-time launch of tweet editing launch by jumping in to cover staffing gaps for last minute feature tweaks and bug fixes Accelerated Professional Spotlight profile modules creation SPADE (Ads Core Nouns) (Group Tech Lead) Founded a Customer Conversations initiative to facilitate better customer empathy between engineers and revenue customers Architect of GraphQL Adoption Project for all advertiser-facing campaign management and analytics GDPR and Privacy lead for Advertiser data. Wrote policy proposal to to meet both GDPR and SOX compliance requirements for advertiser data Improved Creative iteration velocity by moving experimentation from client to server Founded Business User access management team to facilitate enterprise access management to campaign management Founded the SPADE Platform Organization to own the data modeling platform within ads. The teams within it owned data models for frontend and external applications, ad account access management, storage, and ad creatives Ads API (Tech Lead) More than doubled development velocity by removing need for duplicate development with #APIFirst Strategy Built the next generation Ads API Framework used by all internal and external advertiser facing applications. The new framework reduced time to create a new API endpoint from ~1 month to ~1 week of dev work. Build Ads Tweet Indexer system to generate custom timelines for ad applications Chair for the core Ads Database MySQL schema change review committee to ensure stability and velocity of development on primary ads database Chair for Ads API Schema Review Committee to ensure standards and style compliance for Ads API Became Tech Lead in 2015 ### Co-Founder & CTO @ GroupTie Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Palo Alto GroupTie is building a new category of Group Relational Management software that solves enterprise problems not addressed by traditional CRM's like SalesForce or traditional marketing tools like Constant Contact. I'm the technical cofounder and manage the engineering and product team as well as deployment, ops, system architecture, support and application development. We have been used by over 100 high value groups including the Thiel Fellowship, Shasta Ventures, Greycroft Ventures, Microsoft Bizspark, Code2040, HUB Bay Area and more. Our transactional email system sends approximately 10,000 emails a month and provides analytics into about 40,000 loggable events a month. ### Podcaster @ The Drill Down Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 Join us each Wednesday for the latest in technology news and how it affects us all. ### CTO @ StartupDigest (acquired by Startup Weekend) Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | Palo Alto, CA I built a recruiting application to match the best engineers, product managers and designers with startups backed by Andreeson-Horowitz, Greylock, Sequoia and more. I co-curate two email newsletters that of the best startup events in Silicon Valley and the best start-up related articles. I also dropped our server costs by 90%. ### Associate Web Developer @ LinkedIn Jan 2011 – Jan 2011 | Mountain View, CA - Built the marketing website for LinkedIn's premiere corporate recruiting solution - Integrated LinkedIn Engineering blog with LinkedIn SSO - Built and Implemented Internationalization infrastructure for LinkedIn marketing websites. ### Lead Programmer @ Data Driven Safety, Inc. Jan 2009 – Jan 2011 - Wrote distributed data crawler to collect and analyze data from hundreds of data sources worldwide - Released major update to client-facing web app - Managed and trained data collection team ### Podcast Show Host @ Symbiotek Podcast Jan 2009 – Jan 2011 - Founded weekly podcast about ‘Living with Technology’ - Explore implications of technology news and provide commentary and analysis through the podcast and blog ### Web Developer @ Self-employed Jan 2008 – Jan 2009 - Created an automated account management and billing system for Arvixe.com's 10,000 users - Developed and implemented a payroll management web-application for the Amherst College IT Department - Programmed a Carbon Footprint Calculator for ClimateActio2n.com using AMEE's carbon footprint database ### International Development Worker @ Sierra Leone Plymouth Partnership Jan 2008 – Jan 2009 - Worked with local government to provide clean drinking water to rural villages in Sierra Leone - Created a water tax accounting and auditing system to fund maintenance of town water supply - Oversaw repairs of town wells and arranged for construction of additional wells to improve access to drinkable water ### Kermes Technology Fellow @ Amherst College Jan 2006 – Jan 2008 - Managed deployment, repair and tracking of computer inventory for over 2000 desktops and laptops - Drafted power management guidelines for 'Green Computing' initiative - Wrote web applications for internal department use ### Computer Center Supervisor @ Amherst College Jan 2002 – Jan 2006 Primary responder to student computer issues. Identified, Supported and Triaged computer issues that students had. Managed the Seelye Mudd Computer Lab. ## Education ### Bachelor of Arts in Physics Amherst College ### Morris Hills High School ### Fallen Timbers Middle School ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/cmburnor - Website: http://chrisburnor.com/ - Website: http://chrisburnor.com/ - Website: http://thedrilldown.com/ --- Source: https://flows.cv/chrisb JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/chrisb/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-01