Brian Ward
Software Engineer at Simons Foundation
New York, New York, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBrian Ward is a software engineer and compiler specialist with seven years of experience building and maintaining the Stan-to-C++ compiler at the Simons Foundation, focused on robust back-end systems and test automation for complex numerical software. Comfortable across C++ codebases and full‑stack projects, he has contributed substantial testing and core parameter-handling fixes to the widely used stan-dev ecosystem while also shipping a hobbyist MLB LED scoreboard demonstrating production-ready front-end and hardware integration skills. His background includes internships at NASA JPL working on satellite data analysis and climate dataset verification, teaching CS courses, and practical systems work in theater production—evidence of both deep technical rigor and hands-on operational problem solving. Known for methodical debugging (he jokes he’s better at taking things apart now than his childhood toaster), he combines domain knowledge in probabilistic programming with a strong emphasis on test coverage and reproducible scientific software.
7 years of coding experience
4 years of employment as a software developer
4.3 Weighted GPA (Final), 4.3 Weighted GPA (Final) at W.T. Woodson High SchoolBachelor of Arts - BA, Computer Science and Theatre, 3.98 GPA, Bachelor of Arts - BA, Computer Science and Theatre, 3.98 GPA at Boston College
Github Skills (23)
bayesian-statistics10
c-language10
bayesian-data-analysis10
python10
testing10
mathematics10
math10
bayesian10
eigen10
stan10
cpp10
cprogramming-language10
bayesian-inference10
javascript9
ui-design9
Programming languages (27)
Github contributions (5)
MLB-LED-Scoreboard/mlb-led-scoreboard
Jun 2021 - Oct 2022
An LED scoreboard for Major League Baseball :baseball:
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:31 reviews, 122 commits, 60 PRs in 1 year 3 months
Contributions summary:Brian appears to have been heavily involved in the development of this Major League Baseball LED scoreboard project. Their commits demonstrate a focus on both the frontend and backend of the application, including updates to data handling and the rendering of scoreboard elements. The user has also made changes across multiple files related to display logic, status, and potentially user-facing information. Their work includes a large refactor, which signifies a substantial contribution.
raspberry-piadafruitrgb-ledledleague
stan-dev/stan
Sep 2021 - Dec 2022
Stan development repository. The master branch contains the current release. The develop branch contains the latest stable development. See the Developer Process Wiki for details.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:139 reviews, 32 commits, 109 PRs in 1 year 3 months
Contributions summary:Brian primarily contributed to the back-end of the Stan project. Their work involved modifying core model code, including implementing flags for parameter retrieval, fixing initialization bugs, and refactoring parameter handling functions. They also fixed issues within the services related to model parameters. The user demonstrated expertise in C++ and in the internal structure of the Stan probabilistic programming language.
bayesian-inferencestanmasterbayesian-statisticsdetails
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