Sarah Bird is a seasoned software engineer with 13 years of experience building privacy-focused products, data platforms, and developer-facing tools across startups and Mozilla. She blends backend systems engineering in C++, Rust, Go and Python with frontend work in TypeScript/JavaScript, and has deep practical experience in data engineering, visualization (core Bokeh contributor) and deployable ML/measurement pipelines. At Mozilla she led engineering for Mozilla VPN and helped build privacy-preserving attribution systems, and as Principal Engineer at UtilityAPI she drove the company’s first comprehensive data initiative and refactored a core Python monorepo. Her open-source contributions include meaningful enhancements to Bokeh’s interactive plotting notebooks and library, infrastructure work on OpenWPM, and fixes across Mozilla projects like the VPN client and Firefox Accounts. Based in Boston, she combines technical leadership, cross-functional collaboration and a knack for turning observational data into dashboards and models that inform product decisions. A former founder and policy-trained technologist (MIT SM, Cambridge MEng), she brings unusual breadth from embedded/test engineering to large-scale privacy research.
13 years of coding experience
24 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science (SM) Technology and Policy, Master of Science (SM) Technology and Policy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MEng Mechanical engineering, MEng Mechanical engineering at University of Cambridge
Contributions:1 release, 3 reviews, 133 commits in 10 months
Contributions summary:Sarah primarily contributed to improving the development and testing infrastructure of the `openwpm/openwpm` repository. Their work included updating the Firefox version used by the framework, modifying build and installation scripts for different operating systems, and re-integrating Xvfb for headless testing. Additionally, the user implemented environment variables for instrumentation and refactored the dependencies setup using conda, optimizing the testing and deployment process.
A fast, secure and easy to use VPN. Built by the makers of Firefox.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Contributions:2 releases, 313 reviews, 335 commits in 2 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Sarah primarily focused on fixing deprecation warnings and merging branches related to converting strings to UTF8 in the mozilla-vpn-client repository. Their work involved modifying code related to the WireGuard process and various logging components, specifically addressing issues flagged by deprecation warnings. The user also fixed a typo in an error message.
vpn-clientfirefoxmakerssecureprivacy
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