Chris O'Brien
Welcome!
Hi, I'm Chris!
I have curiosity at my core. I love writing code, leading teams, and getting my hands on a complicated problem. I'm excited to share my team's work and showcase some of what I've worked on.
In my spare time, I'm learning about neural networks, developing apps in React Native, flying small airplanes, and studying math.
About Me.
Senior Engineering Leader with 20+ total years of experience and 15+ years managing teams responsible for some of the largest websites and apps in the world. My passion lies in mentoring people, building and scaling teams, and getting my hands on a complicated technical problem. I am naturally curious, always trying to grow, and feel I can learn almost anything.
I started out as a firefighter and EMT in Scranton, PA, but my true obsession was always with computers. Growing up, I spent countless hours building the Linux kernel from scratch, just for fun and the inevitable kernel panic. Eventually, that passion led me to drop out of college when I got the chance to become a CTO at a my friend’s tech startup.
Recent Work History
2017-Present
Director of Engineering
Tinder
Founded the Cloud Infra team and lead the Data Engineering team. Manage 40+ engineers and managers whose focus is on platform stability, DLP, GenAI, and improving our Data & ML pipelines for a Data Lake ingesting TBs/day and many PBs in size. Our work has improved the consumer platform's reliability from two 9's of uptime to over 99.99% for tens of millions of customers.
2016-2017
VP, Infrastructure
Super League Gaming
Created the infrastructure & managed team supporting our Esports gaming platform.
2012-2016
VP, Platform
MediaFire
Platform lead and senior on call resource for MediaFire.com, a top 50 site in the world.
Travels
