Steve O'brien is a seasoned software engineer with 14 years of experience building high-throughput, resilient backend systems for companies ranging from Facebook and Bloomberg to Dataminr and Gilt. He specializes in large-scale distributed systems, data pipelines, and performance-driven rearchitectures that reduce operational cost and improve latency. Steve has led major infrastructure migrations and designed scalable APIs and services for mobile and web platforms, with hands-on experience in on-call operations and post-mortems. Currently based in the New York City area, he continues to ship production-grade software at Blacksmith after senior roles at Dataminr and brief principal engineering stints. Notably pragmatic, he combines deep systems-level knowledge with a product-focused approach—often refactoring and modernizing legacy toolchains to unlock measurable efficiency gains. He holds an M.S. in Computer Science from NYU and a B.S. from Seton Hall University.
14 years of coding experience
17 years of employment as a software developer
M.S. Computer Science, M.S. Computer Science at New York University
B.S. Computer Science, B.S. Computer Science at Seton Hall University
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