Christian Brown

I manage a team of full-stack engineers in eBay’s global shipping department, based in London, Toronto, and Cyprus. My team are responsible for revenue-sensitive post-sales shipping experience for sellers on the web in US, CA, UK, DE, and AU markets. We handle over 20 million label purchases per month, providing solutions like pay-on-print, pay-on-scan, bulk shipping, returns, tracking, insurance/claims, cross-border exports, and ship-to eBay Vault or eBay Authentication Guarantee centres. The engineers build Single Page Applications in React, supported by back-end microservices built in Node.js.

My responsibilities include: six-month planning, project management, stakeholder engagement, staff development, performance calibration, and overseeing hiring and career advancement. Under my leadership, we have transitioned from a project-based to a product-centric, ownership-driven model, leading to a drastic reduction in production issues and customer-reported defects. I empower engineers to prioritise long-term architecture and maintainability over short term results.

I managed the central Video engineering team of back-end engineers in the US and UK, with additional contractors from South America. We built a new SaaS video ecosystem to support up to two billion unique video-on-demand (VOD) play sessions per year. We also handled live-streaming, captioning, digital asset management, ads integration, analytics, and distribution.

We onboarded CNET, ZDNet, GameSpot, GiantBomb, TV Guide, OnlineMBA, Cord Cutters News, BestColleges, NurseJournal and were in the process of bringing Healthline, Metacritic and LonelyPlanet onto our platform. We worked with vendors such as AWS Elemental, Fastly, Bitmovin, Rev, and Mux.

We built API orchestration and microservices in Node.js (Express) & Go/Golang, CMS integrations in PHP (Symfony, WordPress), and deployed into AWS and GCP with CircleCI on infrastructure managed with Terraform.

By acquisition from ViacomCBS, reporting to the VP of Engineering, I oversaw the migration of systems and workflows, including setting transition targets, undertaking vendor evaluations, and managing engineering deliverables & stakeholder expectations.

I architected the replacement VOD solution based on GCP, Bitmovin and Fastly, which serves just shy of a billion video play sessions per year. Achievements include saving US$430,000 first year and US$275,000pa after that in costs for video content management by removing a vendor from our workflow with minimal impact on users and the business.

I was a team leader with direct reports, reporting to the VP of Engineering, part of a larger central CMS and API team of 13 engineers spread across the US, with support from product, PM, QA and DevOps. We maintained the CMS, REST APIs, and tech stack that powered web properties ViacomCBS operated internationally, including CBS News (inc. 60 Minutes), CBS Sports, 24/7 Sports, MaxPreps, SportsLine, CNET, ZDNet, TechRepublic, Download.com, TV Guide, and many more.

My team and I were subject-matter experts on all video-on-demand (VOD) content - interfacing with internal and third-party vendors for transcoding, storage, metadata management, captioning/transcription, ingestion, publishing, and distribution (e.g., YouTube using Content ID). Achievements include saving US$500,000pa on video playback costs, bypassing a third-party video platform, and avoiding the pay per play.

Initially based in Singapore as part of a team lead out of Sydney, we maintained a CMS and API stack that powered many of CBS Interactive’s international brands. We built a new adaptive and responsive CMS user interface with just a few engineers within a couple of months for ZDNet. Out of that success, our teams merged with the US, building a CMS to power almost all of CBS’ web properties, covering broadcast, news, sports, tech, gaming, and food verticals. I led the video workflow integration whilst based in San Francisco for 6wks.

I was part of an international team supporting localised versions of CNET and ZDNet in the UK, AU, Asia, DE and FR. We developed a Zend-based framework used by engineers in those regions to handle scalability problems such as routing, caching and CDN integration. I also provided support for GameSpot, TV.com and TechRepublic. I delivered training in the Paris office to FR and DE teams; and presented our achievements at our off-site in Singapore.

I was part of the Customer Service Tools team within the Applications Dept., responsible for developing and maintaining internal web-based applications to manage customers and staff. We built and supported CRM, billing, HR, and B2B ordering & monitoring systems that integrated third-party telecommunication APIs to process broadband applications with upstream providers (Telstra). I was awarded ‘Hardest Worker of the Year’ in 2006.

I was a team leader in the contact centre, assisting and coaching customer service representatives, standing in for managers for customers with escalated technical or billing issues, identifying and lodging network-wide faults with operations and liaising with high-value clients. I created a set of web-based customer service tools, including a copper wire attenuation calculator based on raw telecommunications cable data to calculate the theoretical maximum DSL speed and a scheduling/roster user interface. The tools were used by all staff across Australian, NZ and South African offices. I was awarded ‘Most Innovative Staff Member’ in 2005.

Oversaw IT operations, from desktop and server IT support to development, hosting and maintenance of their websites, intranet and other web-based tools. I also provided on-site IT support, consulting and web development for their clientele.

I provided web development services for small to medium businesses, including hosting and domain name management. Based on my own CMS, I created and supported web properties from simple microsites to intranets and full shopping portals. I worked closely with clients, from concept and design to development, deployment, and support.