Brian
DeShong
Building ambitious software from zero to one.
25+ years turning ideas into products.
What I Build
Full-stack web applications at every scale — from MVP to millions of users. Currently at Struck Studio launching multiple startups per year across healthcare, fintech, and AI.
How I Lead
Grew engineering teams from 4 to 20+. Built cultures of quality through coding standards, peer review, and continuous delivery. People stay because the work is meaningful.
Where I've Been
ShootProof, CrowdTwist (acquired by Oracle), Rainforest Pay, Yahoo. Experience across startups and enterprise.
Experience
Struck Studio
Principal Software Engineer
Building multiple startups to MVP per year at a Struck Capital venture studio. Full-stack work across Python, FastAPI, React, TypeScript, and AWS spanning healthcare, pet care SaaS, fintech, and AI analytics.
Rainforest Pay
Software Architect
Early engineering team member building a payment facilitation platform using Go, Vue, and TypeScript. Led the SVB banking integration and participated in additional payment processor integrations; implemented payment settlement and reconciliation; worked with AWS services including S3, CloudFront, Lambda, and EKS; introduced end-to-end testing with Cypress.
ShootProof
VP of Engineering
Eight years growing an engineering team from 4 to 20+. Architected the invoices system, parallelized photo delivery system featured in an AWS EFS case study, and managed $1MM+ annual AWS infrastructure. Led PCI Level 1 compliance and Agile transformation. Company sold a majority stake to a private equity firm.
CrowdTwist
VP of Engineering
Led engineering for an omni-channel loyalty and analytics platform serving Pepsi, Nestlé Purina, L'Oreal, and others. Managed all AWS infrastructure — system updates, patching, and capacity planning for new client and product deployments. Grew engineering team from 5 to 12. Company acquired by Oracle in 2019.
Technical Lead · Software Engineer · Director of Technology · Senior SDE · Director
Began career at Community Connect, Inc. (BlackPlanet, MiGente, AsianAvenue), rising from network support to Technical Lead. Briefly at CheetahMail (Experian) as a software engineer. At Schematic, led large-scale projects for Nokia, Turner Broadcasting, Best Buy, and ABC News, serving as Director of Technology and Platform Chair for the Open Source Platforms Group. Built search tools and iOS applications at Yahoo!. Led technology for a daily deal platform at Half Off Depot.