Ethan Brown
Lead Software Engineer at Ambar
Portland, Oregon, United States
Summary
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Top SchoolEthan Brown is a lead software engineer and founder with 12+ years building web-based products and scaling teams, currently guiding delivery and AI-augmented development at Ambar and OptionLab from Portland, Oregon. He combines hands-on full-stack experience—authoring two O'Reilly books on Node and JavaScript and maintaining companion repos—with product leadership that translates complex, data-driven decision processes into collaborative software. His background in mathematics and an MBA informs a pragmatic understanding of business, markets, and technical debt, helping teams ship continuous improvements without burnout. Earlier roles as VP and Technology Director at Value Management Strategies honed his ability to apply decision science to transportation and infrastructure projects—a perspective that inspired OptionLab. He’s comfortable across backend, frontend, and developer tooling, and has presented at OSCON and Node Interactive, signaling both practitioner depth and community engagement.
12 years of coding experience
13 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Business Administration (MBA), Business Administration and Management, General, Master of Business Administration (MBA), Business Administration and Management, General at Portland State UniversityBachelor's degree, Computer Science, Bachelor's degree, Computer Science at Virginia Commonwealth University
Stackoverflow
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jquery-validate
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Github Skills (41)
javascript10
expressjs10
dropdown-menu10
jquery10
handlebars10
css10
authentication10
asp-net-mvc10
user-authentication10
html10
nodejs10
web-development10
templating10
jquery-validate9
redis9
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
EthanRBrown/web-development-with-node-and-express-2e
Jun 2019 - Jan 2023
Companion repository for Web Development With Node and Express, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly).
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:36 commits, 25 PRs, 35 pushes in 3 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Ethan primarily contributed to the development of a web application using Node.js and Express, as evidenced by the code changes in `meadowlark.js` and the supporting handler and view files. They implemented features like user authentication with Facebook and Google, newsletter signup, and a vacation photo contest. The user also worked on API endpoints, database interactions, and incorporated Handlebars for templating, demonstrating a focus on both backend and frontend components.
expressjsjavascriptexpressnodejscompanion
EthanRBrown/web-development-with-node-and-express
Jun 2014 - Dec 2017
Companion repository to Web Development With Node and Express, first edition.
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:105 commits, 19 PRs, 38 pushes in 3 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Ethan primarily contributed to building a web application using Node.js and Express. Their work included implementing basic route parsing, serving static files (HTML, images), and creating a minimal Express application with custom 404 and 500 error pages. The user then added support for Handlebars for templating, created dynamic content using partials and Handlebars helpers. Furthermore, they integrated client-side Handlebars templating and demonstrated cart functionality using static resources.
expressjsjavascriptexpressnodejscompanion
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