Brandon West
Manager, Community Advocacy at Datadog
Denver, Colorado, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBrandon West is a seasoned developer relations and developer experience leader with 15 years of engineering and advocacy experience, currently leading the Advocacy Team for Developer Experience and Tools at Datadog from Denver. He blends hands-on engineering—contributions to high-profile open-source projects like the official Twilio SendGrid C# library and front-end samples for AWS Transcribe—with deep developer marketing and documentation chops developed across roles at SendGrid, AWS, Kickbox, and CoScreen. Brandon has moved between individual contributor engineering work and senior leadership roles, shaping developer-facing tooling, API libraries, and clear product documentation while scaling global developer programs. He pairs a BA in English Literature with technical depth, which shows in his emphasis on clear technical writing and user-focused developer experiences. An often-overlooked strength is his background in full-stack and DevOps practices from early enterprise projects, giving him practical empathy for developer workflows and production realities.
15 years of coding experience
24 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), English Literature (British and Commonwealth), Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), English Literature (British and Commonwealth) at University of Colorado Boulder
Stackoverflow
9,332reputation
704kreached
321answers
4questions
amazon-web-services
top-1%
php
top-5%
amazon-s3
top-5%
smtp
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aws-lambda
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jekyll
top-5%
Github Skills (35)
javascript10
sendgrid10
apidoc10
net10
css10
dotnet10
user-interface10
amazon-web-services10
sendgrid-mail10
e-mail10
asp-net10
api10
dotnet-core10
html10
csharp10
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
amazon-archives/amazon-transcribe-websocket-static
Jul 2019 - Jun 2020
A static site demonstrating real-time audio transcription via Amazon Transcribe over a WebSocket.
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:35 commits, 6 PRs, 12 pushes in 10 months
Contributions summary:Brandon primarily focused on building the front-end interface for the Amazon Transcribe WebSocket API sample application. They implemented HTML and CSS to structure the page, add styling, and create a responsive user interface. Furthermore, the user integrated a GitHub link and AWS logo, along with various UI elements such as input fields, dropdowns, and buttons. Finally, the user also added autoscrolling functionality to the text area.
amazon-transcribeaudiostatic-sitewebsocketaws
sendgrid/docs
Aug 2012 - Aug 2017
Repository of Twilio SendGrid's product documentation.
Role in this project:Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:1338 commits, 6 PRs, 23 pushes in 5 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Brandon's commits focused on updating and improving the documentation for the sendgrid/docs repository. Their contributions primarily revolved around refining content, enhancing existing documentation, and adding new details for certain features. The user's work, as exemplified by the commits, included fixing typos, correcting inaccurate information, and reorganizing content to make the documentation clearer and more accurate.
sendgridtwiliostatic-sitegatsbymarkdown
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