Brandon Schaefer
Principal Programmer at Epic Games
Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolBrandon Schaefer is a Principal Programmer with 14 years building low-level graphics, windowing and input systems for embedded and desktop platforms, currently driving architecture at Epic Games in Raleigh. He has deep expertise integrating hardware-accelerated video and EGL/VAAPI pipelines across projects like Kodi, SDL, and GLFW, and maintained Mir backends that bridged Linux display servers into widely used libraries. At Canonical he reshaped Mir’s input and display layers—improving performance, security (input event authentication), and high-DPI and gamma handling—while also contributing CJK search and input support for Unity7. Brandon’s work blends systems-level C/C++ engineering with pragmatic cross-project integration, often fixing subtle rendering, cursor, and input edge cases that break in real deployments. Known for quietly hardening foundational layers rather than flashy features, he thrives on making graphics and input stacks robust across diverse platforms.
14 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science and Arts, Computer Science, Bachelor of Science and Arts, Computer Science at The Evergreen State College, Washington
Github Skills (26)
vulkan10
drm10
c-language10
apidoc10
sdl10
windows10
linux10
c1110
kodi10
c1710
xwindow10
api10
driver10
windowing10
egl10
Programming languages (8)
Github contributions (5)
spurious/SDL-mirror
Feb 2014 - Sep 2019
An unofficial, automated SDL2 and SDL1.2 HG mirror.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:53 commits in 5 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Brandon primarily contributed to the SDL2 and SDL1.2 HG mirror, addressing issues within the Mir (Mirror) video driver. They removed Android-specific workarounds, fixed software rendering issues, and added support for relative mouse mode. The user also made improvements to error handling and implemented system cursor fixes, as well as updated the code to better support newer Mir versions and their features.
sdl1windowssdlsdl2playfab
SDL-mirror/SDL
Feb 2014 - Sep 2019
Automated mirror of https://hg.libsdl.org/SDL/
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:53 commits in 5 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Brandon primarily contributed to the Mir video driver backend, focusing on integrating and refining the Mir API for the SDL library. They addressed issues related to EGL and OpenGL, including fixing rendering and cursor handling. Their work involved adding support for relative mouse mode and mouse grabbing, along with several fixes, including an EGL bug fix. The user also updated the code to use the new MirDisplayConfig API and added various gamma support functions.
sdl
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