Brian "Fitz" Fitzpatrick

http://www.red-bean.com/fitz/resume/
fitz@gmail.com

Experience

Squarespace, Inc. | Chief Technology Officer, Tock | 2021-2022

In March of 2021, Tock was acquired by Squarespace. Responsible for all aspects of Tock product development including Product Design, Software Engineering, Product Management, and Product Support. Additionally responsible for corporate IT and corporate and production systems integration into Squarespace.

Tock, Inc. | Founder, Chief Technology Officer, Board Member | 2014-2021

Responsible for building, leading, and managing all aspects of Tock product development including Product Design, Software Engineering, Product Management, and Product Support. Additionally responsible for corporate IT, technical strategy, and establishing and maintaining company culture.

Google, Inc. | Engineering Site Lead / Senior Eng. Manager / Senior Software Engineer | 2005-2014

Co-founded Google's Chicago Engineering Office. Founded Google's Data Liberation Front, launched Google Takeout, and developed company-wide policies on import, export, and deletion of user data. Started Google's full-time Transparency Engineering team, launched Copyright Removals, Real-Time Traffic Graphs, Safer Email, Safe Browsing, Forced Safe Search over SSL, and Enhanced Government Takedown Requests. Post-acquisition, managed Feedburner and the Google Affiliate Network migrations to Google technology. Tech lead for Google Code, launched Project Hosting.

Founded Google's Spam Policy team. Developed policy, messaging and acted as company spokesperson on Data Liberation, Open Data, Innovation, Competition, and Google Culture. Presented over 200 talks representing Google, hundreds of press interviews and briefings, and dozens of presentations to politicians and staffers in multiple countries. Advisor to numerous Google Open Source projects. Technical liaison to the Obama for America campaign in 2012.

Instrumental in building and maintaining Google Culture in Chicago and in increasing Google's visibility as an engineering presence in Chicago as the office grew from 30 to 600 employees. Unrelenting efforts in recruiting and hiring top engineering talent in Chicago and across the company.

CollabNet, Inc. | Senior Software Engineer | 2003-2005

Core developer of the Subversion open source version control system. Contributed to new feature design and implementation in addition to maintaining the existing codebase. Most recently acted as a lead in designing and implementing reserved checkouts in Subversion.

Lead engineer on the cvs2svn (CVS to Subversion) repository converter project. Refactored the application to achieve a performance increase of over 500%. Solved major design issues, doubled the size of the test suite, and led the project to its first stable release.

Responsible for maintaining the custom version of CVS integrated into CollabNet's CEE product. Also implemented a generic version control API in Java to more tightly integrate CVS and Subversion into CEE.

Apple Computer, Inc. | Senior Engineer / Senior Consulting Engineer | 2000-2003

Co-designed and implemented Universal Locker, a secure digital file storage and retrieval system that allows users to either mount their storage space on their local workstation or access it via a web browser. Authored the product's LDAP importer, server load monitor, and desktop client application.

Led a team of ten programmers in design, implementation, and deployment of The VRWay Experience, a web-based application for touring cities around the world via Quicktime VR movies. Used my knowledge of the Italian language and culture to better understand the needs of the client, located in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland.

Responsible for designing and implementing applications using a host of Apple technologies, including client-side applications using Cocoa, server-side web database applications using WebObjects, and UNIX server administration scripts using Python. Leveraged extensive knowledge and experience of Open Source projects to decrease time-to-market and reduce the maintenance burden of projects. Acted as mentor and advisor to junior programmers, project manager/lead engineer on larger projects, and designer/programmer on smaller projects.

onShore, Inc. | Software Development Manager / Senior Programmer / Programmer | 1996-2000

Responsible for all aspects of software production using both NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP and open source tools. Directed software projects for clients, including design and production of sophisticated systems involving network application programming. Managed small single programmer projects as well as large n-tier projects involving both staff programmers and contractors.

Lead engineer for requirements development, design, and deployment of a highly scalable middleware application to provide secure web delivery of Bank One's corporate lockbox data and images. Assembled and trained a team of programmers and designers, handled scheduling, client relations, and executed a large portion of the application design and programming.

Freelance | Consultant / Programmer | 1993-1996

[Chicago, Illinois] Designed and developed websites with both static and dynamic content (delivered via cgi scripts). Evaluated security measures for public servers.

[Rome, Italy] Advised Italian clients on purchasing computers and software for personal affairs. Set up an Internet connection at Loyola University's Rome Campus for communication with their Chicago campuses through a local Italian ISP.

Loyola University Chicago | Systems Administrator / Graduate Resident Assistant | 1991-1994

Provided hardware and software technical support, purchasing advice, and repair for a network of Macintosh computers at Loyola's in-house design firm.

Organized events for 160 resident students in Rome, Italy. Executed duties as liaison between students and administration, counseled students, and assisted the Dean.

Selected Publications

Debugging Teams: Better Productivity Through Collaboration | 2015

Co-authored with Ben Collins-Sussman. Published by O'Reilly Media, pp 150.

Team Geek: A Software Developer's Guide to Working Well with Others | 2012

Co-authored with Ben Collins-Sussman. Recipient of a Jolt Finalist Award. Published by O'Reilly Media, 4.5 stars on Amazon. pp 180.

Version Control with Subversion | 2008 / 2004

Co-authored the first Subversion book, with C. Michael Pilato and Ben Collins-Sussman. Now in its second edition, it is published by O'Reilly Media, available online at the Subversion Book website. 4.5 stars on Amazon. pp. 320.

Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time | 2020

Chapter 2, pp. 27-42: "How to Work Well on Teams"
Chapter 5, pp. 81-105: "How to Lead a Team"
by O'Reilly Media, 1st edition.

Unix in a Nutshell | 2005

Chapter 15, pp. 697-744: "The Subversion Version Control System", Co-authored with C. Michael Pilato and Ben Collins-Sussman. Published by O'Reilly Media, this is the 4th edition.

Linux in a Nutshell | 2005

Chapter 14, pp. 839-887: "The Subversion Version Control System", Co-authored with C. Michael Pilato and Ben Collins-Sussman. Published by O'Reilly Media, this is the 5th edition.

The Case Against Data Lock-in | Communications of the ACM | October 2010

Vol 53 no.11, pp 42-46. Co-authored with Jeremy Lueck. Published in print in addition to being available online at the ACM Queue website.

Public Speaking

Professional speaker, with several hundred engagements -- over 50 unique talks -- in the last twenty years, including dozens of keynotes and over a million views on YouTube.

Keynotes

OSCON, PyCon US, Eclipsecon Europe, Europython, Florence, Personal Archiving conference, ACM Reflections|Projections at UIUC, Flourish Open Source Conference, Free Software Conference in Milan, Google Developer Day Milan, Web Masterminds in Milan, Yet Another Perl Conference, Loyola University of Chicago's Spring Tech Conference, DemosEuropa in Warsaw, Northwestern Engineering Week, Google Agency Developer Day.

Conferences/Locations

Google I/O, Apple's World Wide Developer Conference, ApacheCon Europe, ApacheCon US, OSCON Europe, OSCON US, PyCon US, The Macarthur Foundation, American Antitrust Institute Symposium on Systems Competition, Argonne National Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Google Ventures, Khan Academy, 1871, TEDx Youth, IDEO Chicago, BSDCan, C4, FOSSCoach, Google Classroom, Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit, Large Scale Synaptic Telescope Conference, O'Reilly Mac OS X Developers Convention, OpenExpo, Stream, Turkey, ThinkChicago, The University of Chicago, UC Irvine, UIUC ACM Reflections|Projections, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Purdue University, Caltech, DePaul University ACM, DePaul University LUG, Chicago Cocoa and WebObjects User Group, Chicago Data Sciences Meetup, Chicago Python User Group, Cleveland Python User Group, Chicago ACM, Chicago Bar Association, Chicago Mini-Tools of Change, Chicago Ideas week.

Selection of Presentations Available Online

Languages

Python, Java, Javascript, C++, C, Objective C, but these days, mostly English

Education

Loyola University of Chicago, 1988-1992

Other Affiliations

Other Assets

Formerly fluent in Italian... a little rusty these days.