Essem Harris
Senior Lead Product Manager, R&D at National Basketball Association (NBA)
New York City Metropolitan Area United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolEssem Harris is a senior technologist and product leader with nine years of experience building 0-to-1 products at the intersection of blockchain, spatial computing, and consumer entertainment for organizations like the NBA, MLB, and Scopely. He led the NBA’s visionOS app (Apple Design Award finalist) and a gamified 3D collectible product, bringing a blend of R&D rigor and consumer-facing product instincts informed by his prior consumer insights and UX research roles. Essem pairs hands-on technical contribution—such as backend fixes to high-profile open-source projects like Mastodon—with strategic stewardship of industry standards as co-chair of the Metaverse Standards Forum’s Digital Asset Management committee. His background as a quantitative analyst for political campaigns and current MA studies in philosophy give him an uncommon mix of analytical, ethical, and systemic perspectives on emerging technology. Based in NYC, he balances commercial delivery, standards work, and academic inquiry while mentoring cross-disciplinary teams to ship high-impact, revenue-driving experiences.
9 years of coding experience
5 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Arts - MA Philosophy, Master of Arts - MA Philosophy at The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkBachelor of Arts - BA Political Science, Bachelor of Arts - BA Political Science at University of Massachusetts Amherst
Stackoverflow
321reputation
296kreached
4answers
5questions
Github Skills (19)
back-end-development10
image-processing10
ruby10
websocket9
websockets-client9
client-websocket9
websocket-client9
postgresql8
activitypub7
audio6
svg6
google-chrome6
glyph-icons6
fluent-ffmpeg6
greasemonkey6
Programming languages (21)
Github contributions (5)
mastodon/mastodon
May 2020 - Apr 2025
Your self-hosted, globally interconnected microblogging community
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:2 reviews, 7 PRs, 22 comments in 4 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Essem contributed to the Mastodon codebase by fixing a backup service oversight, which involved modifications to the `backup_service.rb` file. They also addressed an issue related to PNG uploads by properly removing a specific chunk of data, with changes impacting several model files related to image handling. Further contributions included adding new emojis from an external source and updating the streaming service to use `WebSocketServer`.
social-networkwebfingerpixelfedhosteddocker
TheEssemCraft/economics
Jan 2018 - May 2018
Contributions:207 pushes in 4 months
rulerhostedperfectsitesportfolios
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