David Barrett
Founder, CEO, And Director at Lumina
Portland, Oregon, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDavid Barrett is a serial engineer-founder who built Expensify from 2008 into the world’s leading preaccounting platform while continuing to ship low-level, production-grade systems. A lifelong programmer and recognized network/database expert, he architected Expensify’s Bedrock distributed database—an active/active, WAN-replicated store—years before blockchain entered mainstream discourse. Prior to Expensify he led engineering at Red Swoosh (acquired by Akamai) and cut his teeth on 3D graphics and VR, blending systems-level depth with product-driven leadership. Based in Portland, he remains hands-on as CEO while advising startups like Lumina, and is known for pragmatic documentation and thoughtful optimizations that keep large-scale background job systems reliable. Outside work he balances intense engineering focus with low-tech family time, like playing Minecraft with his daughter.
13 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
BSE, Computer Engineering, BSE, Computer Engineering at University of Michigan
Stackoverflow
493reputation
9kreached
1answer
2questions
Github Skills (16)
amazon-bedrock10
sqlite10
sql10
database-design10
documentation10
bitrock10
cprogramming-language9
c-language9
json8
api-design8
git6
caching6
open-source6
mmap6
linux-kernel6
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
Expensify/Bedrock
Sep 2016 - Nov 2020
Rock solid distributed database specializing in active/active automatic failover and WAN replication
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Database Engineer
Back-end Developer & Database EngineerContributions:4 releases, 10 reviews, 217 commits in 4 years 2 months
Contributions summary:David primarily contributed to the documentation and functionality of the Bedrock database. Their work included creating and updating documentation files like `index.html`, `cli.html`, and `mysql.html`, demonstrating a focus on user guidance and protocol support. Furthermore, the user implemented database features and optimized job queries within the system, with significant changes to the `Jobs.cpp` file, which included implementing job states and parent/child job relationships. Their efforts enhanced the database's usability and the management of background tasks.
distributed-databasefailoverreplicationwan
Expensify/Style-Guide
Oct 2015 - May 2017
Official Style of Expensify.
Contributions:4 PRs, 2 pushes, 3 branches in 1 year 6 months
expensify
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