Brian Petersen, Developer in Salt Lake City, UT, United States
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Brian Petersen

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Software Engineering Developer

Salt Lake City, UT, United States

Toptal member since November 2, 2021

Expertise
Software EngineeringElixirReact.jsNode.jsPythonWeb DevelopmentBack-end DevelopersAWSCSSREST APIPostgreSQLGraphQLLinux
Bio

Brian specializes in back-end architecture and systems optimization. He has a proven track record of shipping high-quality software (Elixir, Node.js, and Python) that delivers major business value. He was tasked with writing the payment system at Divvy that handles billions of dollars that has never experienced downtime or major bugs. Brian has defined MVPs, designed migration plans, built Gitlab CI/CD pipelines that increased shipping velocity, led development teams, and mentored engineers.

Portfolio

Divvy
Elixir, Phoenix, GraphQL, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Kubernetes, PostgreSQL
InfiniD Learning
Node.js, WebSockets, React, Redux, REST, Electron
Sewell Direct
C#, .NET, React

Experience

  • Software Engineering - 6 years
  • REST - 5 years
  • React - 5 years
  • Node.js - 5 years
  • PostgreSQL - 4 years
  • Elixir - 3 years
  • Phoenix - 3 years
  • GraphQL - 3 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

MacOS, Linux, Vim Text Editor, Elixir, Phoenix, REST, GraphQL, React, PostgreSQL, Node.js

The most amazing...

...product I've helped build is a world-class credit card program for Divvy that handles billions of dollars; a one-stop shop for small business finance.

Work Experience

Senior Back-end Software Engineer

2019 - 2021
Divvy
  • Led development of a credit card payment application that handled $1+ billion worth of payments with zero downtime and no critical bugs.
  • Advocated and implemented observability and monitoring for our high touch and critical third-party integrations resulting in fewer production outages and quicker IR resolutions.
  • Provided informal training and mentoring for many back-end engineers through code review, pair programming, and onboarding new engineers.
  • Led a development team of four engineers for a new credit card partner.
Technologies: Elixir, Phoenix, GraphQL, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Kubernetes, PostgreSQL

Full-stack Software Engineer

2017 - 2019
InfiniD Learning
  • Led back-end development by encouraging and implementing engineering best practices and architecting scalable solutions.
  • Built Gitlab CI/CD pipelines that increased shipping velocity and confidence.
  • Designed a migration plan from Java Swing desktop to cloud needed for business growth and agility.
  • Defined the MVP and set targeted milestones needed for the launch at the beginning of the new school year. Involved in all aspects of Kanban development cycle, including gathering user requirements and writing user stories.
Technologies: Node.js, WebSockets, React, Redux, REST, Electron

Full-stack Software Engineer

2015 - 2017
Sewell Direct
  • Suggested and replaced product search using MSSQL with Elasticsearch that increased sales conversion rate by 10% and internal omnisearch performance by 90%.
  • Profiled application and database performance to find areas of improvement that decreased page load time from five seconds to under one second, resulting in increased conversion rate.
  • Chose and led the adoption of React by vetting software needs, preparing training materials, and implementing new feature work using React resulting in increased programmer happiness.
Technologies: C#, .NET, React

Divvy - One-stop Shop for SMB Finance

http://getdivvy.com
SaaS product that reached unicorn status ($1 billion+).

I served as a back-end engineer leading the development of several projects. I focused on the payment and credit card product areas. Customers paid down their credit lines, created virtual cards, were notified of potential fraud activity, categorized their spending, and had real-time insight into their spending with the systems I built.

I worked with a team comprising of a product manager, product designer, and back-end, front-end, and mobile engineers. We followed an Agile/Kanban style of development in Jira.

InfiniD Labs - Multi-player Game

http://infinid.io
A spaceship simulator game designed for the classroom powered by Node.js, WebSockets, and React. It's played by a full classroom of students (upwards of 30 at a time). It encourages teamwork and student collaboration.

I participated in product calls for product discovery and led the development of several critical projects for the early-stage startup. This included porting a Java Swing desktop application to Electron for teachers to drive the missions; building an internal tool for our content team to build new missions for the space simulator; setting up CI/CD pipelines with Gitlab; operating the production platform using Kubernetes on AWS.
2015 - 2018

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

Brigham Young University - Provo, Utah, USA

Libraries/APIs

React, Node.js, REST APIs

Tools

Vim Text Editor

Languages

Elixir, Python, CSS, HTML, GraphQL, C#

Frameworks

Phoenix, Redux, Electron, .NET, Django

Paradigms

REST

Platforms

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Linux, Kubernetes

Storage

PostgreSQL

Other

Software Engineering, WebSockets, RESTful Web Services, Back-end Development, Front-end Development

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