Daniel Connor - Technical Leadership & Architecture
Photo of Daniel Connor

Daniel Connor

Senior Technical Leadership

Professional Experience 20yrs

Education

University of Saint Thomas
Philosophy 2006 Saint Paul, MN
Institute of Production and Recording
Music Production 2003 Minneapolis, MN
University of Minnesota
Physics 2002 Minneapolis, MN

Testimonials

Daniel Gelernter CEO / Dittach
Daniel Connor is one of the best, most imaginative and most thorough and efficient engineers I've ever worked with. I would recommend him without hesitation for any software engineering project; he's a superb architect, a dedicated, execution-focused developer, and a good team manager to boot. Always goes the extra mile.
Brendan Baldwin Senior Engineer / Servio / Google
I worked closely with Daniel for nearly two years. During that time I was consistently impressed with his creativity and range of skill from the visual design to code all the way down the stack. I also witnessed first-hand his ability to pick up new technologies quickly and deal with legacy and 3rd party solutions with grace. In addition to his ability, he is a true pleasure to work with, supporting his colleagues with sensitivity and adherence to meaningful principles and ethics. I highly recommend Daniel Connor for a key role in any creative and impactful project.
Will Acheson Backend Engineer / Dittach
Working with Daniel at Dittach was an uplifting and developmental experience for me. Daniel is not your common Engineer; Daniel has an innate understanding of software architecture that boarders on the artistic. Daniel strives with creativity and foresight towards designing and developing functional and innovative products. I learned a new sensible best practice, useful tool, or optimization strategy at practically every stage of working with Dan.
Lindsay Tabas Head of UI/UX / Gust
Daniel is a class-act and trusted front-end advisor, as well as collaborator of mine. We worked closely together during the time he spent with my team at Gust, and was a linchpin for our project. He is talented, sharp and multi-skilled. I relied on his expertise as a front-end developer, but also his keen design insights to help me with UX when I most needed a second opinion. If you have a chance to work with Daniel, do not hesitate. I look forward to working with him again sometime soon.

About Me

I am a senior technician emphasizing scale in systems, elegance in execution, and equity in culture. Humans have a natural desire to appreciate and preserve beauty, so intentionally crafting beautiful systems promotes growth, joy, and beneficial habits. My teams never fail to excel and I have mentored many junior engineers who have developed into senior technologists in their own right. With over 20 years of professional experience in over a dozen startups and several large corporations such as Google and IBM, I've seen just about everything.

I currently live in New York City and, in addition to technology, I enjoy cycling, martial arts, psychology, writing, and music production.

Work Experience (Selected)

  1. Google / Mandiant Attack Surface Management
    Senior Principal Engineer (Mandiant) /
    Staff Engineer (Google)    2022 - 2025

    Attack Surface Management provides comprehensive insights into systems vulnerabilities from within and without. Demand for ASM after the Google acquisition skyrocketed due to both deepening integrations with the Mandiant and Google ecosystems, as well as continued expansion of new and existing ASM customers. I was responsible for finding ways to scale the ASM platform at least 100-1000x while simultaneously improving availability and reliability. During my tenure, ASM integrated with other Google properties such as Mandiant Digital Threat Monitoring, VirusTotal, Security Command Center, and Chronicle. ASM remains one of the fastest growing services in Google Public Cloud.

    Focuses
    • Distributed computing
    • Database optimization
    • Broader Google ecosystem
    Technologies
    • Ruby
    • Golang
    • Sinatra
    • PostgreSQL / AlloyDB
    • ElasticSearch
    • Memorystore / Redis
    • Cloud Spanner
    • Cloud Storage
    • Cloud IAM, JWT
    • gRPC
    • Kubernetes
    • Linux

  2. IBM Cloud Databases / Watson Data Services
    Head of Cloud Databases API & Applications2016 - 2021

    IBM Cloud Databases is the primary datastore layer for IBM's public cloud. I am responsible for architecture and API design in the application team (the team that builds and maintains all customer-facing interfaces). My API framework and its underlying libraries are responsible for supporting over $1b in revenue. It drives the management of every single database instance in the public cloud and has been PCI, FedRAMP, and GDPR certified. The framework has been adopted as the de facto way to build APIs for data services throughout the IBM Cloud organization. Several of my libraries have been open-sourced by IBM.

    Focuses
    • architecture
    • API design
    • low-level frameworks & libraries
    Technologies
    • Ruby on Rails
    • Golang
    • Kubernetes
    • PostgreSQL
    • MongoDB
    • MySQL
    • ElasticSearch
    • etcd
    • Cassanda
    • RabbitMQ
    • Redis
    • nginx
    • HAProxy

  3. Joules
    Founder2016 - 2018

    Joules was a distributed labor workflow engine. Workflows route work from humans to machines and back again. Human and machine actors compliment each other with humans providing subjective abilities, and machines enhancing scale and efficiency. Use-cases include training machine learning algorithms and providing a scalable, outsourced labor APIs for third-parties.

    Focuses
    • distributed workers (human and machine)
    • workflows (asynchronous and synchronous)
    • payments & remittance
    • API interfaces
    • cryptocurrencies
    Technologies
    • Phoenix Framework
    • Elixir
    • websockets
    • NativeScript
    • PostgreSQL
    • Javascript
    • Ethereum
    • Solidity
    • Bitcoin
    • nginx
    • Linux

  4. Dittach
    Interim CTO2016 - 2018

    Dittach provided a browsable view for email attachments. I was on-boarded to vet, hire, and manage developers, to architect the system, and to represent technical matters with investors. Attachments were downloaded, metadata extracted and indexed, and previews were generated by by distributed workers. Designed for maximum availability, the system ran with zero downtime for months at a time.

    Focuses
    • system architecture
    • project & human management
    • mentorship
    • investor & board relations
    • devops
    Technologies
    • Node.js
    • IMAP
    • Riak
    • ElasticSearch
    • RabbitMQ
    • ffmpeg
    • ImageMagick
    • LibreOffice (headless)
    • Amazon Web Services
    • Docker
    • Amazon ECS
    • Kotlin
    • Objective C
    • CSS
    • Linux

  5. BikeMinds
    Head of Engineering2014 - 2016

    BikeMinds was a social network built for motorcycle enthusiasts. I was responsible for the vetting, hiring, and management of developers while overseeing application architecture.

    Focuses
    • architecture
    • project & human management
    • mentorship
    Technologies
    • Node.js
    • Javascript
    • MongoDB
    • CSS
    • Linux

  6. CloudCrowd / Servio
    Senior Engineer2009 - 2012

    Servio was a distributed, map-reduce platform for coordinating human labor. As the first hire at Servio, I was responsible for full-stack development with an emphasis on the frontend interfaces and backend API frameworks. Accomplishments include the launch of a translation service with a 90% profit margin and an editing service that professionally edited a 1,200-page book in 24 hours.

    Focuses
    • architecture
    • frameworks
    • APIs
    Technologies
    • Ruby on Rails
    • RabbitMQ
    • MySQL
    • Javascript
    • CSS
    • Linux