Bryan Helms

Bryan Helms

Hi there, I’m Bryan. I’m a technology generalist, with interest areas in API design, UX, learning.

Why you should hire me

About Me

I am an experienced engineer that has broad experience with both front-end and back-end systems. I’m comfortable offering technical leadership as well as managing people, diving into code (writing, reviewing, debugging, optimization, etc.), thinking and designing at a systems and product level, teaching and mentoring other engineers, and improving team efficiency. I have a bias for action, identifying team roadblocks and bottlenecks and approaching them with immediate and long term solutions. I truly enjoy learning and think it’s healthy to feel like a newbie from time to time, rather than resting on one’s laurels. I value curiosity in other engineers, as I believe that in most cases it will significantly help in debugging ability and skills growth.

If you are a startup, I have experience with the business an internal sides of a startup. At Xamarin, I worked closely with the sales and marketing teams, providing tooling that supported and enabled customer growth and retention. From my time on App Center at Microsoft, I also have experience bringing a product from its earliest stages all the way through to maturity.

Experience

Director, Engineering/Team Lead of the Deposits Banking Platform Group at First Republic Bank

From April 2020 to Present

  • Drove architecture and design of Domain-level APIs for Deposits use cases across multiple lines of business
  • Led development of orchestration flows across multiple Systems of Records for Deposits operations as part of Core Transformation
  • Developed shared core components related to auth token generation and management, Swagger/OpenAPI spec generation from the codebase, and asynchronous processing for API endpoints
  • Reviewed the spec and served as subject matter expert for a newly developed complex vendor API that serves as the backbone of Onboarding customers for the Deposits line of business
  • Modernized team engineering practices, formalized Banking Platform Group coding standards, and automated related tooling support
  • Standardized onboarding development environment for new employees
  • Proposed an accepted intern project to develop a "single command" development environment setup, aimed at achieving first week contribution for new developers
  • Contributed to organization hiring practices, including refining and teaching how to administer technical interview questions, and calibrating expectations to developer experience level

Technologies: Kafka, Apigee, C#, .NET Core, Openshift/Kubernetes, AWS

Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft

From July 2016 to April 2020

  • Senior engineer on the Core UX team for App Center
  • Worked closely with design team to build and maintain a React-based component library based on design system
  • Led "surge" teams for revamping App Center Releases portal and first run experience
  • Worked as lead engineer with PM team to architect the App Center Auth product onboarding and setup flow during its beta
  • Mentored two interns to successful completion of their projects (dark mode and improved onboarding flow)
  • Worked extensively with accessibility (a11y) improvement efforts on the App Center portal
  • Built CI/CD pipeline and UI libraries for localization (l10n) and internalization (i18n) assets for the App Center Portal
  • Built the App Center account creation, management, invitation, and email notification flows as an early member of the Core Services team
  • Served as interim team lead for a cumulative of 2.5 months while manager was on paternity leave

Technologies: React, Express/Node.js, TypeScript, C#, .NET Core, SQL Server, Docker, Kubernetes, AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service), Postmark/SendGrid/Mailjet, Optimizely

Systems Engineer, Commerce Team at Xamarin

From July 2013 to July 2016

  • Developed critical information tools used daily by sales, finance, and leadership
  • Integrated customer success and retention tooling for the product and storefront
  • Led integration of sales tax calculation and charging (saving the company millions in revenue)
  • Developed tools and systems to allow greater flexibility and self-service for sales teams
  • Worked on major portions of the customer-facing infrastructure and public sites (Xamarin Store, Website, Careers portal, Single Sign-On)

Technologies: C#, .NET, AWS, Postgres, SQL Server, Azure

Software Engineer at Harris Corporation

From May 2006 to July 2013

  • Worked on a GUI-based command and control (C&C) system for shipboard IP radio on Windows XP Embedded
  • Led the team developing a command and control (C&C) system for a field-deployable satellite communications platform
  • Developed a web-based monitor and control application for a next-gen VOIP-based system for air traffic control (enabled by using SignalR)
  • Served as a subject matter expert for C# and .NET within the company
  • Wrote and taught sections of the internal C# training course, focusing on lambdas, LINQ, and new features of .NET 4

Technologies: C#, .NET, SQL Server

Education

Master of Science, Industrial and Systems Engineering at University of Florida

From September 2011 to May 2013

This was a hybrid between an MBA and a degree in Industrial Engineering. I graduated with a 4.0 GPA. Coursework included Corporate Accounting, Business Finance, Strategy, Marketing, as well as numerical methods and analysis, process improvement, supply chain planning, among others.

Bachelor of Science, Computer Engineering at University of Central Florida

From August 2002 to May 2006

I completed the Software Engineering concentration, and I graduated Cum Laude with a 3.84 GPA.

Contacting Me

The best way to reach me regarding hiring is via email. You can also message me on LinkedIn, or find my Twitter, etc.