Brian Forbis
Architect at athenahealth
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBrian Forbis is an architect and backend-focused engineer with 10 years of experience designing API platforms and PaaS solutions that span private datacenters and public cloud, currently driving interoperability in healthcare at athenahealth using standards like HL7 FHIR. He specializes in building containerized, high-availability microservice ecosystems with strong CI/CD, observability, and artifact-based deployment practices, and is fluent in Perl, JavaScript (including Node), Java, Python, and shell tooling. His work spans databases and messaging (Oracle, Elasticsearch, RabbitMQ), monitoring stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, StatsD/Graphite) and container orchestration in DC/OS and Docker. An active open-source contributor, he has improved backend functionality in projects such as Backstage and patched generators and runtime issues in Apache Thrift, reflecting a knack for pragmatic fixes across languages. Based in Cambridge, MA, he pairs systems-level architecture with hands-on development and an appreciation for subtle reliability improvements—like ensuring proper DB application naming and test coverage—that pay dividends in production.
10 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
BA, Computer Science, BA, Computer Science at Willamette University
Github Skills (38)
javascript10
postgresql10
database-connection10
back-end-development10
jes10
databases10
server-configuration10
perl10
backstage10
jestjs10
jtest10
backend10
thrift10
database10
c-language9
Programming languages (13)
Github contributions (5)
apache/thrift
Sep 2017 - May 2021
Apache Thrift
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:10 commits, 11 PRs, 29 comments in 3 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Brian primarily contributed to the Apache Thrift project by fixing bugs and improving code quality in various language generators (Perl, JavaScript). Their work involved addressing indentation issues, handling edge cases, and refactoring code to improve reliability and performance. They also implemented enhancements, such as handling sequence identifiers in JavaScript and allowing UDP sockets for the Perl library.
actionscriptapache-thriftnetwork-clientdartapache
backstage/backstage
Jan 2023 - Feb 2025
Backstage is an open framework for building developer portals
Role in this project:Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:43 reviews, 8 PRs, 112 comments in 2 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Brian primarily contributed to the backend functionality of the Backstage project, focusing on database interactions and configurations. They implemented features related to setting the application name for PostgreSQL connections, ensuring proper plugin identification. Additionally, the user added tests to validate the database connection configurations and application name settings. Furthermore, the user worked on improving the configuration visibility and the integration with the GA4 analytics module.
portalsinfrastructureopen-platformdxbackstage
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