Brendan J Best

find me on LinkedIn
Summary
Experienced Software Engineering Manager with over 10 years of expertise in leading cross-functional teams, delivering scalable full-stack applications, and driving technical innovation. Proven track record in modernizing legacy systems, improving team productivity, and aligning engineering efforts with business goals. Specialized experience in Typescript, ReactJS, and NodeJS.
MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS
  • Managed the redesign and rewrite of an online ticketing software and implemented a responsive, mobile-friendly version that added on-the-go access to staff managers and reduced bugs by 99%.
  • Led an engineering team to the deployment of a healthcare portal that facilitated 100's of 1000's of users' critical needs and improved user engagement on the global health insurance portal.
  • Created a product-specific recommendations UI for the Bestbuy.com search feature which drove an increase of .5M in sales every month.
EXPERIENCE
Principle Software Engineering ConsultantBoston ScientificRemote
February 2024 — present
  • Engineered an application for oncology departments, modernizing treatment orders, leading to a reduction of 50% in processing time and refining patient care by reducing barriers to purchases.
  • Conducted bi-weekly stakeholder meetings, validating alignment on project updates while producing detailed reports speeding up the approval process for software components by 1 month.
  • Created a component framework for the front-end application, enabling rapid deployment of new features and eliminating code redundancy; realized zero critical errors in penetration testing.
  • Produced a NestJS backend for accurate dosage calculations and secure transfer with upstream data sources, contributing to the precision of treatment plans for hundreds of patients every month.
  • Implemented a unit testing framework using Vitest and React Testing Library, in coordination with Quality Engineering, achieving 100% test coverage verified through automated tools while demonstrating ongoing testing efforts to leadership.
Software Engineering ManagerMadison Square Garden EntertainmentRemote
December 2022 — February 2024
  • Managed and mentored 7 software engineers on 2 teams covering 4 projects, resulting in enriched communication between teams, augmented management of shared resources, and a 30% improvement in job satisfaction scores.
  • Administered sessions with engineers and managers to facilitate the migration of 2 projects from Azure to AWS, reducing cloud costs for those projects by 15% and reducing downtime to near zero.
  • Rebuilt the employee ticketing application, transitioning from AngularJS to a NextJS / NodeJS stack, while implementing a responsive design; gained a 90% drop in errors and improved load times for 1000's of users.
  • Developed onboarding and training documentation, resulting in a streamlined integration process for new engineers and decreasing ramp up time for new hires by nearly 40 hours per individual.
  • Led 20 interviews with engineering candidates; resulted in 10 successful hires; aligned with HR and management to simplify the evaluation process and reduce hiring times from 4 weeks to 2.
Lead Software EngineerOptum / United HealthcareRemote
January 2020 — December 2022
  • Initiated and orchestrated the architectural planning, engineering development, testing framework, and deployment activities for the Pharmacies and Prescriptions portal, driving a 100% increase in traffic to the global application, based on direct user feedback.
  • Collaborated with senior engineers to develop the portal with a NextJS framework, using ReactJS and Typescript to improve bundle size and reduce load times for end users by nearly 50%.
  • Coordinated teams across 3 countries and 5 time zones, improving communication efficacy by leading daily sync meetings and establishing communication channels that led to a significant reduction in bugs, and meaningfully accelerated delivery timelines.
  • Liaised between project managers and 3rd-party vendors, leading to the addition of critical features to that increased revenue potential by keeping users on the application 20% longer on average.
  • Directed every production release while troubleshooting pipeline issues using Jenkins and GitHub actions; achieved zero downtime for end users during critical release sessions, ensuring uninterrupted service.
  • Employed monitoring strategies with tools like Datadog to facilitate rapid issue detection and resolution processes while ensuring the platform maintained an uptime rate exceeding 99.9%.
  • Led 15 interviews with engineering candidates resulting in 5 new team members and boosting work capacity on the project by 100%; the team was then able to meet nearly every deadline enacted by leadership.
Senior EngineerTarget Corp.Minneapolis, MN
November 2017 — December 2019
  • Designed and engineered an interactive dashboard using Redux and ReactJS, visualizing customer behavior, and enabling the implementation of targeted marketing campaigns, producing a 25% increase in click-through rates for email and mobile engagements.
  • Developed an advanced analytics tool for the TV marketing team, enabling real-time campaign performance tracking that granted dozens of stakeholders throughout the organization 100% increase of visibility into TV advertisement analytics.
UI DeveloperOptum / United HealthcareEden Prairie, MN
March 2017 — October 2017
  • Produced the frontend architecture for a standardized global header across 20+ client portals, enhancing UI consistency and brand integrity; minimized user confusion by streamlining navigation pathways for seamless customer interactions.
  • Boosted website responsiveness and modularity resulting in up to 50% reduction of client load for users and ensuring cross compatibility for older browsers.
UI EngineerBest Buy Inc.Richfield, MN
March 2016 — March 2017
  • Launched advanced search features that shortened user journeys from initial click to transaction completion, directly contributing increased sales via search from 1.5m to 2m every month.
  • Migrated legacy code to a streamlined publishing process for the search suite of features, enhancing overall performance and reducing keystroke lag times by 300ms during peak traffic periods.
  • Launched an advanced tracking product for user behavior on Bestbuy.com, enabling real-time analytics for the Customer Recommendations team which directly resulted in enhanced product offerings based on data analysis from 1M+ user sessions.
Frontend DeveloperThomson ReutersEagan, MN
September 2014 — December 2016
  • Bootstrapped a user-friendly application that synthesized over 300 APIs, revolutionizing the customer service process: enabled representatives to streamline complex data queries through a user-friendly UI portal, cutting customer issue resolution time by 80%.
  • Engaged with product users to gather comprehensive feedback on reported issues, enabling the identification of critical usability enhancements that led to a 30% reduction in user-reported bugs during the development cycle.
Skills
  • Architecture: Planning, design, documentation-based organization, agile implementation.
  • Technical development: ReactJS, NextJS, NodeJS, NestJS, JavaScript ES6+, Yarn, NPM.
  • Continuous delivery: Azure Web DevOps, OpenShift, GitHub / Gitlab, Adobe Experience Manager.
  • Design: CSS, Figma, Styled Components, Emotion, SASS, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign.
Education
EDUCATION Master of Science Information and Communications Technology University of Wisconsin – Stout, December 2020 Bachelor of Arts Communications / Electronic Media University of Wisconsin – Green Bay, May 2012.
Certifications
Certified ScrumMaster Scrum Alliance Awarded February 2, 2025