Michael Branch

Email, Github, LinkedIn

Engineering Manager / Staff Software Engineer at WhatnotSince September 2023 in Seattle.

As part of the client app platform team, ensure the engineering quality, stability, and performance of the Whatnot client apps.

• Migration of a large legacy web codebase to modern React/Next.js and TypeScript while improving support for application observability and monitoring.
• Established code standards and development patterns for contributors to web across the company. Worked closely with teams to support their needs and productivity.
• Strengthened application authentication security.
• Enhanced developer experience and CI/CD pipelines, optimizing build and deployment processes.

Director of Software Engineering at ToggleSeptember 2020 — August 2023 in Seattle and New York City.

Architecture, design, and development of internal and customer facing software to coordinate business operations and robotic production. Hiring and growing a small, highly focused software engineering team.

• Using Go and Electron, designed and implemented core software for remotely programmable robotic work cells, data synchronization (SQLite to Postgres), and automated software updates.
• Developed collision avoidance logic through simulation for multi-robot work cells with visualization and dynamic program reordering.
• Architecture and implementation of multi-tenancy support across the platform.

Staff Software Engineer at DeliverooJuly 2017 — August 2020 in New York City and London.

Deliveroo acquired Maple in May 2017.

Introduced Go as a technology for building software to an engineering team that was almost exclusively using Ruby on Rails in a microservices architecture.

• Technical lead for Enterprise API development and maintenance.
• Developed a broad suite of mobile and web applications to support operations at Deliveroo's delivery kitchens.
• Shipped the company's first public-facing GraphQL API to support the web and mobile consumer applications.

Staff Software Engineer at MapleSept 2016 – May 2017.

Worked on a highly-productive and self-directed technology team that values technical craftsmanship and involvement with product strategy.

• Developed a high-volume email campaign system with personalization and event tracking capabilities with Go.
• Built a compositing tool leveraging web technologies (Node.js, React, PhantomJS) capable of generating personalized images on-demand for emails.

Principal Software Engineer at Warby ParkerSept 2013 – Sept 2016 in New York City.

Technical lead and manager on a scaling technology team. Contributor to several different high-impact projects over 3 years, with a focus on higher standards for front-end engineering.

• Lead engineer on the company’s first consumer-facing iOS app, Warby Parker.Warby Parker was featured in Apple’s 10 Best iPhone Apps of 2016 and Best of 2016.
• Architected and led development of an API-powered responsive website with UI components and server/client rendering with React.
• Spoke at FutureStack15 conference in San Francisco about The Delight and Difficulties of Universal JavaScript with ReactSee the talk..
• Contributor to an in-house ecommerce platform that powers retail point-of-sale, online store, and the iOS app.

Senior Software Engineer at ideeliJan 2013 – Sep 2013 in New York City.

Front-end and back-end support of a fast growing ecommerce site built with Ruby on Rails.

• Maintained the API that served multiple mobile apps.
• Worked with several technologies to improve and measure performance including memcached, Riak, and statsd.
• Engineered personalization features for web.
• Built an iOS and Android push notification system to manage messaging hundreds of thousands of users daily.

Freelance Software EngineerJul 2010 – Dec 2012 in New York City.

Development and consultation with Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, ActionScript 3.0, WebGL, and Objective-C for web, mobile, and desktop applications and games.

Clients including AKA, Bureau Blank, Curious Brain, Design Brooklyn and Melcher Media.

• Supported a diverse set of clients, programming languages, and projects.
• Learned to implement practical solutions while held to tight constraints and short deadlines.

Software Engineer at Biomedical CommunicationsJul 2004 – Dec 2010 in Tucson, Arizona.

Developed and maintained a variety of web applications in support of the University of Arizona College of Medicine and other health science colleges.

• Developed a full-featured web and desktop exam system for medical students.
• Implemented HIPPA compliant applications working with patient and research data.

Mobile Game Developer at Octopi Media LabsFeb 2003 – Jun 2004 in Tucson, Arizona.

Design, concepts, and development of mobile games using Java J2ME for clients like Nokia.

• Worked with a remote and local team of developers, interns, and artists.
• Created high-quality games on hardware with limited capability.

Skills

Languages

• Go, JavaScript/TypeScript/Node.js, Java, Obj-C, Python, PHP, Ruby, Swift

Education

Interdisciplinary B.F.A. in Computer Science, Media Arts, and Visual Communications from The University of Arizona.