Christian Brown

Today I lead a team of full-stack engineers within eBay’s Shipping department, based in London, Toronto, and Cyprus. We enhance, maintain, and ensure the uptime of the shipping purchase journeys on the web, handling over 30m label orders per month across the US, UK, CA, DE, and AU markets. These workflows include payment selection, collection booking, insurance, customs forms, printerless labels via QR codes, and eBay programmes like Simple Delivery, Global Shipping, Authenticity Guarantee, and Vault. We also manage non-purchase flows such as shipping history, cancellations, cost adjustments, insurance claims, and carrier outage tooling. Our experiences are built in React and served by microservices written in Node.js.

I ensure the team stays focused on developing highly testable solutions while fostering a mindset centred around long-term platform architecture and maintainability. This approach has resulted in a reduction of production outages and customer-reported issues by over 60%. I manage capacity planning and work closely with stakeholders to prioritise both known and ad-hoc tasks. Additionally, I define team objectives and support engineers’ career growth by providing regular, actionable feedback.

In 2021, following the success in my previous role, and Red Ventures’ appetite to expand its video offering to more brands, I was promoted to manage a new video engineering team. The team were made up of back‑end engineers across the US and the UK, and contractors from South America. We built a new SaaS video platform, to deliver up to 2 billion video‑on‑demand (VOD) play sessions per year, as well as introduce support for live video. We handled encoding via Bitmovin for VOD, and AWS Elemental for live video, dynamic packaging & CDN via Fastly, playback via Video.js, captioning via Rev, analytics via Mux, and built custom solutions for digital asset management, ads integration, and content distribution.

The API orchestration microservices were built in Node.js (Express) and Go/Golang, CMS integrations in PHP (Symfony, WordPress), and deployed into AWS and GCP with CircleCI on infrastructure managed with Terraform. We on-boarded CNET, ZDNet, GameSpot, GiantBomb, TV Guide, OnlineMBA, Cord Cutters News, BestColleges, NurseJournal and were in the process of adding Healthline, Metacritic and LonelyPlanet.

In 2020, Red Ventures acquired some of ViacomCBS’s non-broadcast brands, and I moved with that acquisition. I reported to the new VP of Engineering, and my main task was overseeing the migration of online video systems and workflows from what was previously established under ViacomCBS. This included undertaking vendor evaluations with the product team, planning transition targets for the Transition Services Agreement (TSA), staying on top of engineering deliverables, and managing stakeholder expectations across both organisations.

I architected and was a lead engineer for the replacement video‑on‑demand (VOD) solution. It was designed to be able to serve up to a billion video play sessions per year to handle the brands that had moved to Red Ventures. We used services provided by GCP, Bitmovin and Fastly. As part of the transition, we were able to remove a content management vendor, saving US$430k in the first year, and US$275k pa after that.

In 2016, I reported to the VP of Engineering, and I was promoted to lead a small team of engineers based in the US and the UK. My team was one of three which maintained the CMS, APIs, and tech stack that powered CBS’s web properties. This included famous brands like CBS News, 60 Minutes, CBS Sports, 24/7 Sports, MaxPreps, SportsLine, CNET, ZDNet, TechRepublic, Download.com, and TV Guide.

My team and I were subject‑matter experts on all video‑on‑demand (VOD) content - using internal and third‑party vendors for transcoding, ingestion, digital asset management, captioning & transcription, publishing, and distribution. A key achievement was when I developed an alternative solution to a vendor that was charging a fee per play, saving the company ~US$500k pa.

In 2019, CBS merged with Viacom to become ViacomCBS (aka Paramount).

In 2012, building on the success of the central group we had formed in my previous role, I transitioned to the international CMS team and I was promoted to senior. To kickstart this, I volunteered for a six-month secondment to Singapore, where my new team were based. We maintained the CMS UI and API stack that powered the company’s localised international web properties.

A key achievement was when a small group of us built a new responsive UX for the combined global version of ZDNet in just two months. Following that success, we merged with the US, forming a global team responsible for building a single CMS to power all US and international websites — spanning news, sport, tech, gaming, and food verticals. During a six-week assignment in San Francisco, I led the integration of new online video functionality to our CMS to support CBS’s broadcast brands.

In 2007, CNET Networks had separate localised versions of CNET and ZDNet for the UK, AU, DE, FR and SG/Asia markets. I focused primarily on UK web properties and collaborated with engineers from international teams to develop shared solutions to common challenges. Eventually, we established a central team creating a framework that provided routing, caching, and CDN integration out-of-the-box. I delivered training for the framework in the Paris office to FR and DE engineers, and presented our achievements at our off‑site in Singapore. I also assisted US teams with bug-fixing and feature development on GameSpot, TV.com and TechRepublic.

In 2008, the broadcasting company CBS acquired CNET Networks, as a way to revitalise their online presence.

I was a software engineer in the Customer Service Tools team within the wider Applications dept. We built and maintained CRM, billing, HR, and B2B ordering systems. Following the project success in my previous role, my focus area was bringing the tools I had created into the official CRM application. I was awarded ‘Hardest Worker of the Year’ in 2006.

I was a team leader in the billing and technical support contact centre. I coached junior staff, helped customers with escalated technical issues, identified & logged network-wide faults with the Network Operations Centre (NOC), and, went the extra mile for iiNet’s high-value business customers.

As a side project, I created a set of web-based tools to help my colleagues. One tool provided the theoretical maximum DSL speed by calculating copper-wire attenuation from raw cable data. Another was a roster scheduling user interface that added a lot of features on top of an existing legacy system. These tools ended up being used by all support staff across AU, NZ, and SA offices, which led to winning ‘Most Innovative Staff Member’ in 2005 and supported my move to the Applications team.

I oversaw all IT operations, from local desktop and server support to development, hosting and maintenance of METS’s websites, intranet and other web‑based tools. I also provided on‑site IT support, consulting and web development for their clientele.

I provided web development, hosting and domain name management services for small to medium businesses. I developed and supported web-based applications from microsites and intranets to full shopping portals — all based on a CMS I created. I worked closely with my clients, supporting them through the stages of concept, design, development, and launch.