Brian Mckenna
Software Engineer at Obsidian Systems LLC
Launceston, Tasmania, Australia
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBrian Mckenna is a software engineer with 17 years of experience who blends deep functional programming expertise (Haskell, PureScript, Idris, Agda) with practical systems and compiler work. He has driven architecture and platform initiatives at Atlassian—including identity and Marketplace platforms—and contributed to major open-source projects such as the Scala compiler, PureScript, Monocle, Scalaz and Idris. Brian pairs language design and compiler contributions with production engineering: shipping Haskell services, optimizing compilers, and improving developer tooling across JVM and JavaScript ecosystems. Based in Launceston, Tasmania, he also applies his engineering skills to renewable-energy projects and off-grid systems, reflecting a strong interest in EVs, batteries and sustainable living. Known for teaching and mentoring developers in functional programming, he brings both deep theory and hands-on delivery to complex, safety- and correctness-focused systems.
17 years of coding experience
17 years of employment as a software developer
Undergraduate Certificate Sustainable Living, Undergraduate Certificate Sustainable Living at University of TasmaniaBachelor Information Technology, Bachelor Information Technology at QUT (Queensland University of Technology)
Stackoverflow
45,928reputation
3.3mreached
106answers
2questions
jython
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php
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curl
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python-multiprocessing
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javascript
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twitter
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Github Skills (77)
structures10
compiler-development10
testing10
python-multiprocessing10
functor10
javas10
halogen10
linter10
haskell10
javascript10
twitter10
jquery10
typeclass10
purescript10
webui10
Programming languages (38)
Github contributions (5)
fantasyland/fantasy-land
Apr 2013 - Feb 2016
Specification for interoperability of common algebraic structures in JavaScript
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:54 commits, 9 PRs, 12 pushes in 2 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Brian primarily focused on implementing algebraic structures, specifically Functor, Monad, Semigroup, Applicative and Monoid instances, within the `id.js` file. Their contributions involved adding and modifying code to adhere to the "fantasy-land" specification for functional programming in JavaScript. They refactored existing implementations, changed function names, and corrected errors, showcasing their understanding of algebraic structures and functional programming principles. They also exported the Id constructor using CommonJS.
fantasy-landspecificationjavascriptinteroperabilityalgebra
wartremover/wartremover
Jan 2013 - Jul 2016
Flexible Scala code linting tool
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:161 commits, 32 PRs, 49 pushes in 3 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Brian primarily contributed to the development of the `wartremover` library, a Scala code linting tool. Their work focused on extending the tool's capabilities by adding new linting rules. The user added features to make certain Scala features ambiguous and also to disable features based on code analysis. They implemented a macro system to enforce code style rules and added a series of tests to ensure code quality.
lintermacroslintingmetaprogrammingcompiler-plugin
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