Brian R. Bondy

Remote · Company site ↗

Co-founded Brave and helped take it from an initial browser concept to a global privacy product company, while remaining deeply involved in architecture and implementation.

• During four months of pre-founding discussions, helped turn the initial pitch into a concrete technical plan covering browser architecture, installers, updates, signing, cost, schedule, and delivery. Founding history →
• Started the first desktop codebase in May 2015 on Mozilla Graphene and Gecko. The team built a React/Redux browser UI from scratch, then stopped the unreleased prototype after 637 commits when missing platform support made the approach impractical.
• Moved the desktop browser to Muon, a security-hardened Electron fork with sandboxing enabled and Node removed from renderer processes. The team ported and shipped a beta-quality browser in one month and five days, then took Brave out of stealth on January 20, 2016.
• Helped navigate repeated mobile architecture decisions: an early React Native iOS attempt, a Firefox iOS–based release with the APIs needed for Shields, the Link Bubble acquisition and Android launch, and later Chromium/WebKit foundations.
• Led the transition from Muon to Brave Core, structured as a maintainable Chromium fork. It replaced six-week, two-engineer Chromium upgrades, enabled broad extension compatibility, increased code sharing with Android, and materially improved browser retention and growth.
• Led architecture and development of major products and capabilities including Brave Browser, Brave Wallet, and the privacy-preserving Leo AI assistant, while continuing to contribute smaller enhancements and fixes.
• The platform added Brave Shields, a high-performance ad-blocking engine, privacy-preserving ads and Rewards, Tor windows, WebTorrent, IPFS with an embedded node, and a native multi-chain wallet. These were company and team efforts, not individual projects.
• Built and mentored engineering teams and managed as many as 60 employees and contractors, roughly one-third of the company. Brave had grown from two people to more than 100 teammates by the 1.0 launch in 2019.
• Remain hands-on in Brave code and developer tooling, including browser work, the Go component-update service, and Brave Dev Bot, an autonomous agent that implements stories, opens pull requests, responds to review, and manages CI loops.

Remote · Company site ↗

Built learning environments and platform capabilities across Khan Academy's computer-science product, including a fully client-side SQL environment and the HTML/CSS environment.

• Created the SQL learning environment during hack week using SQLite, Emscripten, asm.js, and sql.js. It recreated database state and results on every edit while running entirely in the browser. SQL implementation →
• Helped generalize the computer-science environment so it was no longer JavaScript-specific, and co-authored the HTML/CSS learning environment with John Resig, Pamela Fox, and Alex Rodrigues.
• Led development of peer evaluations for student coding projects and, with Colin Fuller, LearnStorm, a Google-funded three-month Bay Area math competition.
• Built an autosuggest code-editor feature as a three-day hackathon project and implemented a Gecko-based automated end-to-end testing framework in under two weeks; it was used during each deploy.
• Was sole primary developer of the Khan Academy Firefox OS app. It supported offline content, search, account progress, localization, low-memory devices, and the full video/article library; the original release received a five-out-of-five rating.
• Served as developer lead for a user-satisfaction team and made approximately 700 commits spanning product work, SEO, discussions, Google App Engine integration, privacy, fixes, and enhancements. Khan Academy retrospective →

Remote · Company site ↗

Worked across Firefox platform code, with particular depth in Windows integration, browser updates, graphics, performance, and the Windows 8 browser.

• Joined as a three-month contractor on July 6, 2011 and converted to a full-time employee a few months later.
• Led the Windows UAC/silent-update project and Mozilla Maintenance Service, including security enhancements to update flows. The service let Firefox update without repeated elevation prompts while preserving user control. Silent-update design →
• Built substantial parts of Firefox for the Windows 8 Metro environment: initial groundwork, graphics integration, file picker, Metro contracts, rendering support, browser registration, installer and updater behavior, and dozens of related tasks.
• Worked on Windows platform integration and Snappy startup performance, plus crash fixes, memory-leak fixes, intermittent-test failures, telemetry, and general Firefox enhancements.
• Added BMP and ICO encoders, Vista PNG-in-ICO support, refactored the ICO decoder to reuse the BMP decoder, and added hundreds of reference tests.
• In the first year alone, landed more than 215 patches across more than 170 resolved bugs and filed 200 bugs. Later resume versions summarize the full tenure as hundreds of contributions.
• Served as a module peer for Firefox, Toolkit, ImageLib, and Widget:Win32, reviewed patches, mentored bugs, and joined Mozilla's Coding Stewards group. First-year retrospective →
• Created Code Firefox and a Mozilla development cheat sheet to help new contributors navigate the codebase and build process.

Windsor, Ontario, Canada

Co-founded and built commercial Windows products in backup, storage, encryption, networking, and security; ROBOBAK and the VisionWorks product portfolio were acquired in 2011.

• Co-founded VisionWorks Solutions and the ROBOBAK company. ROBOBAK delivered enterprise remote-office/branch-office backup with deduplication, journaling, indexing, archiving, agentless backup, and replication across several hundred thousand lines of code.
• Vision Backup comprised more than 130,000 lines of C++ and sold more than 3,000 copies. It supported LAN and FTP backup, schedules, compression, email notifications, incremental backups, online updates and activation, tape and optical media, and a COM plug-in system.
• Built File Access Manager, a filesystem filter driver that enabled backup access to exclusively opened and locked files; the prior resume records more than 50,000 outstanding licenses and licensing by several backup vendors.
• Managed and developed custom software projects, managed and maintained an encrypted-drive application, worked on TDI-filter-based spam and phishing protection, and created COM SDKs for multiple products.
• The ROBOBAK business and VisionWorks product portfolio were acquired by KineticD in 2011. Acquisition note →

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Developed a device driver for a security video-capture camera and debugged several other projects.

• Developed a device driver for a security video-capture camera and debugged several other projects.

Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Built Linux/Qt synchronization and network-analysis software for military simulation systems, beginning as a co-op and continuing part-time during school.

• Started during a co-op term and continued part-time during school in 2003.
• Created a briefcase application that synchronized one or more remote directories.
• Built an application integrated with simulation software that sniffed network packets and displayed complex results using a custom Qt graphing widget.
• Created additional C++/Qt/File Alteration Monitor utilities, packaged the software as an RPM, and wrote project and user documentation.

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Worked on Paradox 10, early .NET and web-service technology, internal software distribution, and technology research.

• Rewrote printing functionality in Paradox 10 and contributed to its first and second service packs.
• Worked on .NET-related projects, including XSLT transformation of SOAP documents.
• Created a generic website-update notification system used company-wide.
• Evaluated emerging technologies for possible use at Corel and developed new company ideas.