Brent O'connor
Co-Founder & Director Of Engineering at Epicserve
Manhattan, Kansas, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolBrent O'connor is a seasoned software leader and co-founder with 16 years of experience building scalable, user-focused web applications and engineering teams from the ground up. Based in Manhattan, Kansas, he blends hands-on Python/Django and DevOps expertise with people leadership, having led projects that scaled a state-level data system to 36 states. He designs and maintains CI/CD pipelines and SaaS infrastructure, mentors engineers at all levels, and drives adoption of modern development practices across organizations. His open-source contributions to Django ecosystem projects demonstrate steady backend craftsmanship—particularly around payments and category systems—alongside pragmatic refactors and cross-version compatibility work. Comfortable switching between infrastructure, backend, and front-end concerns (Vue/JavaScript), he pairs technical depth with a track record of shipping production systems used by large, real-world audiences. Unusually for a tech founder, his early background in pastoral ministry informs a mentoring-first leadership style that emphasizes sustainable team growth and learning.
16 years of coding experience
18 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelors of Science Pastoral Ministry, Bachelors of Science Pastoral Ministry at Manhattan Christian College
Stackoverflow
5,792reputation
321kreached
6answers
9questions
django
top-5%
Github Skills (23)
subscribe10
python10
back-end-development10
django10
html-template10
python-templates10
code-templates10
apptemplates10
manage10
subscriber10
payment10
management10
cpp-templates10
backend10
stripe-api10
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
jazzband/django-categories
Aug 2012 - Aug 2020
This app attempts to provide a generic category system that multiple apps could use. It uses MPTT for the tree storage and provides a custom admin for better visualization (copied and modified from feinCMS).
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:82 commits, 28 PRs, 53 pushes in 8 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Brent focused on updating the django-categories application to work with different versions of Django and integration with other Django-related tools and libraries, such as Grappelli. Their contributions included modifying templates and code to ensure compatibility across different environments and simplifying code for Grappelli integration. The user also addressed bug fixes, such as handling edge cases when forms are submitted. Furthermore, they worked on modernizing the project by updating settings for compatibility with recent Django versions and deprecated features.
admincategorygenericmodifiedmptt
pinax/pinax-stripe-light
Apr 2013 - Apr 2013
a payments Django app for Stripe
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:11 commits in 6 days
Contributions summary:Brent primarily contributed to the back-end logic of the Django application, focusing on payments-related features. They fixed bugs in subscription handling and added improved handling of subscription status displays within templates. The user also refactored code, removing the need for context processors by implementing a PaymentsContextMixin and updated templates. Their contributions included adding Stripe customer creation when subscribing and addressing minor PEP8 code style issues.
django-appspaymentsstripepythondjango
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