Brent Walther

brentwalther@gmail.comhttps://brentwalther.net

experience

Google

Senior Software Engineer • Austin, TX • Google Play services • Nov 2020 – Present

Software Engineer III • Austin, TX • Google Play services • Oct 2018 – Nov 2020

  • Realized new distribution methods for Google Play services module releases. Provide support and work directly with contributor teams to troubleshoot and add custom features.
  • Modernized and stabilized our code base by integrating Google Guava collections where appropriate.
  • Writing and refactoring rich unit, integration, and Android instrumentation tests using Google Truth, Robolectric, and Mockito.
  • Landed several features with end-to-end ownership: design, development, deployment, documentation, monitoring, and experimental analysis.

Software Engineer III • Seattle, WA • Google Maps for Android • Oct 2017 – Sept 2018

  • Designed and documented an end-to-end notification feature for Google Maps for Android and hosted two Google EP interns who successfully implemented and demoed the feature at the end of their summer internship.
  • Implemented client side and a significant amount of server-side code to double the number of eligible commute notifications users (XX million DAU).
  • Implemented four separate experiments to improve quality and CTR metrics for commute notifications. All four improved our internal quality metric.

Software Engineer II • Seattle, WA • Google Maps for Android • Aug 2016 – Oct 2017

  • Implemented new traffic-jam rendering logic and a brand new traffic-polyline generator that integrated with the map rendering team's brand new APIs.
  • Launched a new traffic incident inspection card which integrated three new pieces of incident metadata in over 20 languages.
  • Fixed two major accessibility (TalkBack focus) issues in Google Maps - a useability bug in the directions page header and one within scrolling view.
  • Launched an Android shortcut (with in-app promotion) to increase usage of a new traffic hub screen.

Software Engineering Intern • Seattle, WA • Google Maps for Android • May 2015 – Aug 2015

  • Built two production ready features that both ended up launching.
  • Turned a mock from a slide deck into a fully functioning feature touching each piece of Google's multi-tiered directions stack.
  • Designed and implemented a new data format for the internal Google Maps Directions/Navigation API.
  • Prototyped 3 different ideas for a directions UI improvement and fully implemented one of them.

Software Engineering Intern • Mountain View, CA • Java Platform • May 2014 – Aug 2014

  • Designed and implemented a web-based visualization to see real-time JVM heap stats.
  • Improved a garbage collection event serialization HTTP endpoint to export data for the visualization.
  • Added a prototype monitoring interface to the JVM to classify different kinds of internal JVM memory usage.

AskU

Software Engineer • College Station, TX • Platform/Mobile App • Sept 2014 – May 2015

  • Implemented and launched several features on the web platform utilizing Ruby on Rails, Javascript, Angular, ElasticSearch, AWS EC2 and S3.
  • Implemented and launched several features on the mobile platform built with Angular and Ionic framework.
  • Designed and executed 5 A/B test experiments that increased user activation and retention.

Notequill

Co-Founder • College Station, TX • Feb 2013 – Mar 2014

  • Contributed to Notequill's "digital canvas" using HTML5 Canvas element and Javascript/jQuery.
  • Designed and engineered the platform from the ground up using PHP, MySQL, jQuery, Twitter Bootstrap, and an ORM.
  • Co-Invented provisional patent application #61/847,713 "Note Recorder System and Method" filed July 18, 2013.

DATATRAK International

Software Developer Associate I • Bryan, TX • Jan 2013 – Mar 2014

  • Developed and maintained the core platform using Java, JSP, Javascript/jQuery, HTML, CSS, SQL, and XML.
  • Refactored the platform to allow us to update the ORM from Oracle Toplink to JPA/EclipseLink.
  • Reduced JSP display latency by 250+% across the platform by fixing a system health bug I found using JProfiler.
  • Sped up an enormous release by helping document product requirements and performing integration testing.

leadership

Google Intern Host (Summer 2018) – Hosted two Google Engineering Practicum Interns.

Google Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI) Interview Coach – Coaching next generation computer scientists with practice interviews.

aggieHack(web) Sponsor and Planner (Fall 2013) – Planned and organized this 100 member hackathon event at Texas A&M. Developed three of the four lightning challenges and served as a mentor to hackers that were new to web development.

skills

Strong/Recent: Java, Python, Protobuf, Android, Robolectric, Google Guava, Google Truth, Bazel, Starlark, Git

Moderate familiarity: Dagger, Guice, C++, Javascript, Ruby, SQL

education

Texas A&M University College Station, TX
Masters (MCS) in Computer Science • GPA 3.6 • Graduated: May 2016
Bachelors (BS) in Computer Science • GPA 3.3 • Graduated: May 2014
Startup Aggieland Entrepreneur in Residence (2013-2014)