Bret Comnes

Professional software engineer experienced in product development, platform engineering, observability, technical leadership, SRE and cloud architecture.

• portfolio: bret.io
• email: [email protected]
• location: Sutter Creek, CA
• github: github.com/bcomnes
• npm: npmjs.com/~bret
• linkedin: linkedin.com/in/bcomnes

Socket 2021–Present

Member of Technical Staff 2026–Present

Tech Lead for the Developer Surfaces team

• Led technical direction through approximately 40x traffic growth and 415% fleet expansion.
• Rearchitected Socket’s GitHub App, serving traffic from many Fortune 500 companies, around worker services, durable queues, concurrency controls, and rate-limit backpressure.
• Built and scaled Socket’s public API and scanning platform.
• Established observability, integration testing, and operational practices for reliable high-volume processing.
• Hired and interviewed engineering candidates.

Senior Software Engineer 2021–2026

Joined Socket as employee #5.

• Built Socket’s GitHub App, including authentication, installation flows, webhook handling, repository scanning, and automated pull-request reports.
• Automated background scanning during customer onboarding and repository or permission changes, improving time to first result.
• Expanded Socket’s public API and scanning capabilities, improving product coverage and reliability.

Littlstar → Rad.live 2019–2021

Principal Engineer 2021

• Designed and implemented an NFT minting and auction platform in 10 weeks.
• Implemented a rebrand of Littlstar to Rad.live.
• See Littlstar portfolio for more information.

Senior Software Engineer 2019–2021

• Built multi-repository infrastructure provisioning and deployment pipelines for AWS using Terraform and GitHub Actions.
• Developed Little Core Labs’ peer-to-peer content delivery system.
• Designed and implemented an organizational microservice pattern.
• Developed an organizational strategy for JWT authorization across microservices.

Hyperdivision 2019

Software Engineer 2019

Denmark 🇩🇰

• Developed secure peer-to-peer financial systems for managing cryptographic assets.
• Developed security-critical native and WebAssembly cryptography bindings (prebuildify, libsodium, wat2js).

Netlify 2017–2019

Platform Engineering 2018–2019

• Maintained and developed Netlify’s CI build environment.
• Launched Netlify’s selectable build-image infrastructure and interface.
• Developed and maintained Netlify’s OpenAPI client, and architected and rewrote the JavaScript client.
• Monitored and maintained the health of Netlify’s multi-cloud infrastructure.
• Scaled and deployed infrastructure with GitOps.

Product Engineering 2017–2018

• Planned, designed, implemented, tested, and iterated on new features for Netlify’s web app.
• Supported, maintained, tested, and released Netlify’s open-source JS and Go libraries.
• Architected and built Netlify’s next-generation, extensible CLI.

ZHealth 2016–2017

Software Engineer 2016–2017

• Developed EtchCV, a structured documentation suite for cardiac surgeons and hospitals.
• Designed and implemented APIs and microservices.
• Implemented and supported a distributed endpoint deployment pipeline.

Jaguar Land Rover 2015–2016

OS & Application Engineering 2015–2016

• Developed mobile apps, infotainment systems, and OS software using JavaScript, Node.js, HTML, and CSS.
• Targeted in-vehicle embedded systems, fully utilizing the onboard CAN bus.
• Architected a single sign-on service and documentation server for internal documents and project planning.

Portland State University 2012–2015

HPC Operations & Python Development 2013–2015

Office of Information Technology ARC

• Supported and developed services for PSU academic research computing.
• Administered research computing systems.
• Provisioned hardware on premises and in colocation facilities.

Lab Instructor & TA+RA 2012–2014

PSU Physics Department

• Instructed, developed, and graded undergraduate physics and hardware labs.

Wiley 2012

Textbook Development Consultant 2012

• Developed interactive figures and demos for an interactive calculus textbook published by Wiley Publishing.

HSU Gravitational Research Laboratory 2009–2011

Research Assistant 2009–2011

• Designed and machined custom experimental instruments and developed the lab’s data collection, automation, and analysis software to study the gravitational inverse-square law at submillimeter distance scales.

National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center 2009

Arecibo Guest Researcher 2009

• Trained on and operated the world’s largest radio telescope at the time, and analyzed the collected data to search for previously undiscovered galaxies.

Education

• Humboldt State University B.S. Physics 2011
• Portland State University M.S. Applied Physics 2015 (completed coursework; degree not pursued)

Media

• Socket - GitHub App Improvements 2022-07-26
• JS Party – Episode #227: JS logging & error handling 2022-05-27
• JS Party – Episode #219: Making moves on supply chain security 2022-03-24
• Netlify Blog: A more flexible build architecture with updated Linux 2019-03-14
• Netlify Blog: Fearless deploys for your lingering processes 2018-11-28
• Netlify Blog: Netlify CLI 2.0 now in Beta 🎉 2018-09-10
• Netlify Blog: Buy and secure a custom domain through Netlify 2018-06-19
• Netlify Blog: Netlify now shows your deploy status on its favicon 2018-05-22
• Netlify Blog: Introducing Site Dashboards 2017-08-22
• Netlify Blog: Introducing Audit Log 2017-07-27

Community

• Datcast Podcast (2018 - 2019)
• PDX Node Meetup organizer (2015 - 2017)
• Node School Organizer & Mentor (2016)
• Code for Portland Organizer & Mentor • Open Civic Data Initiative (2014 - 2015)
• WebRTC Camp Speaker (2013)
• Indieweb Camp Organizer & Mentor (2012 - 2014)