Joe Brown · Senior Software Engineer
Senior software engineer building reliable products and faster engineering systems.
I build full-stack products, developer platforms, and practical AI tooling at production scale—currently at Zapier after several years at Microsoft.
Delivery feedback loop
3×
faster rebuilds
72%
lower CI costs
Engineering impact
Product adoption, delivery speed, and operating cost.
Selected results from workflow products, CI performance, infrastructure migrations, internationalization, and security compliance.
- monthly active users
- 1,000,000+
- Implemented collaborative automation sharing in Power Automate with TypeScript, React, C#, and .NET.
- infrastructure savings
- 95%
- Moved presence detection from Ably to Firebase and documented a migration path reused by other teams.
- lower CI costs
- 72%
- Reduced average pipeline spend through dynamic test selection, sharding, incremental builds, and caching.
- faster rebuilds
- 3×
- Made local and CI rebuilds three times faster in Zapier’s largest Next.js and TypeScript application.
- strings internationalized
- 15,000+
- Extracted user-facing copy, introduced an i18n layer, and connected the repository to Lokalize.
- services brought into compliance
- 11
- Brought 11 production services beyond minimum compliance requirements within one month.
Selected projects
What I built, why it works this way, and what I learned.
Each case study documents the constraints, architecture, implementation choices, testing strategy, and tradeoffs behind the result.
My Personal Website
A static-first Next.js portfolio built around typed content, accessible server-rendered pages, and detailed engineering case studies.
Outcome: Projects, roles, and services are validated data modules, so new entries can be added without changing the route or card architecture.
Experience
From workflow features to CI platforms and security tooling.
Senior Software Engineer · Zapier
January 2026 to present
Led build and CI/CD improvements for Zapier’s largest Next.js and TypeScript application, reducing production builds by 25%, test execution by 30%, CI shard allocation by 90%, and average pipeline costs by approximately 72% while making rebuilds three times faster and improving page loads by 15%.
Software Engineer II · Microsoft
August 2022 to January 2026
Partnered with designers and product managers to deliver and optimize the Copilot Studio Automation Editor ahead of schedule, improving performance for a feature that grew from more than 40,000 to more than 250,000 monthly active users during my tenure.
Services
Architecture, implementation, and engineering-system improvements.
Product and full-stack development
Turn clear product requirements into maintainable web applications that teams can continue to own.
Backend systems and integrations
Design and improve APIs, service boundaries, data flows, and third-party integrations.
Practical AI features
Move AI ideas from demos into evaluated, observable, and resilient product workflows.
Performance and developer experience
Find and remove the bottlenecks that slow applications, builds, tests, and delivery teams.
Engineering notes
Published investigations from production engineering work.
Detailed write-ups on the measurements, failure modes, and tradeoffs behind production engineering decisions.
Latest notes
How switching from Ably to Firebase cut real-time infrastructure costs by 95%
A cost investigation and migration strategy that replaced a mismatched pricing model while preserving presence reliability and safe rollback.
How barrel files slow down TypeScript builds
A benchmarked barrel-file removal that made production builds 29% faster, reduced module collection, and enabled accurate CI test selection.
Start a conversation
Have a product, system, or engineering problem worth solving?
Good starting points
- 01Product architecture
- 02Developer productivity
- 03Practical AI integrations
I typically respond within two business days.