Dynamic background with orange accent
Profile picture

Brian Mullins

Technologist, Entrepreneur, Artist

About Me

Source Code Studios Art Piece

Work Experience

Appex

Oct 2022 - Aug 2024

Built platform infrastructure from the ground up and led AI R&D.

Appex logo

Head of Platform Engineering & AI

I led a team that developed platform infrastructure and services that supported our developers and our suite of production mobile applications. All services were delivered via robust infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD infrastructure that follow DevOps best practices. My role involved design, architecture, and implementation as well ensuring the efficiency, scalability, and reliability of our platforms. I also led our Labs R&D initiatives that explored bleeding edge technology, including AI, and developed ways to effectively leverage them in our products and inside the business.

Decorative image
RSA Security

Nov 2013 - Sep 2022

Led RSA Labs in building and delivering innovative new products.

RSA Security logo

Head of RSA Labs

Mar 2022 - Sep 2022

Led the RSA Labs development team which focused on innovation and new product development within RSA. My team transformed ideas into prototypes and then evolved those prototypes into enterprise-grade products. During this time we delivered a state-of-art network analysis tool that helped enterprises better understand what's happening inside their networks and prioritize their security efforts.

Sr. Principal Software Engineer, RSA Labs

Nov 2017 - Mar 2022

Senior developer and technical lead for RSA Labs. My work varied from research endeavors in areas such as blockchain and decentralized identity, to transforming research and ideas into prototypes, and finally to leading the development and deployment of production-ready serverless applications. I helped lead the development and launch of a new third-party vendor risk product that earned millions of dollars in revenue and simultaneously transformed how the engineering organization built cloud-native products.

Principal Software Engineer, SecurID

Nov 2013 - Nov 2017

Worked on next-gen enterprise authentication software, including both server-side code and mobile, with a focus on Android. Over the course of one year I overhauled the Android app internals and reduced the bug count by 90%.

Decorative image
Tech Residents

Apr 2012 - Nov 2013

Founded Tech Residents, a hiring platform for software developers.

Tech Residents logo

Co-Founder

Co-founded Tech Residents and launched an online hiring platform targeted at disrupting the software recruiting industry. Our platform allowed software developers to showcase their technical and communication skills to employers via recorded chats. I was responsible for all aspects of the web application including development on the full stack from the RDBMS up to the UI, as well as business/product strategy. Technical highlights included the design and implementation of a RESTful API, backend Python web services, and frontend asynchronous JavaScript components. Source code is available on GitHub.

Decorative image
RSA Security

Jun 2007 - Mar 2012

Learned how to build secure, reliable software.

RSA Security logo

Software Engineer

Developer for the Consumer Authentication Group where I created enterprise applications for Windows, Mac, and Android. Primary responsibilities included development of the flagship SecurID software token product line. Responsibilities also extended to threat modeling a complex manufacturing infrastructure, analyzing discovered security gaps, and providing recommendations to improve the security posture of the system.

Recommendations

Justin Bingham

CTO at Appex • Managed Brian directly

Justin Bingham's profile picture

Brian is a uniquely talented technologist and an even better colleague. He and I first collaborated on a decentralized identity project while he was leading the Labs team at RSA, and he was my first call when I needed someone to build out and lead a platform team. He's creative and effective in how he solves problems, and has a natural ability to organize and lead his teams to real results. I cannot recommend him strongly enough.

Victor Malchikov

Senior Principal Engineer at RSA NetWitness • Reported directly to Brian

Victor Malchikov's profile picture

Brian is a fantastic manager and a skilled engineer who is able to take large complex problems and break them down into actionable steps. Under his leadership at RSA Labs our team was able to deliver a number of patented technologies and production ready applications.

Anton Lupau

Full Stack Senior Software Engineer • Reported directly to Brian

Anton Lupau's profile picture

I have had the privilege of working closely with Brian in labs, where he has consistently demonstrated exceptional leadership, technical expertise and commitment to developing great software solutions. Throughout our collaboration, I certainly learned a lot from Brian, in both technical and managerial domains.

Skills

Startupsexpert
Javaexpert
Pythonexpert
Djangointermediate
JavaScriptexpert
TypeScriptintermediate
Node.jsintermediate
Reactbeginner
Tailwindbeginner
AWSexpert
AWS Serverlessexpert
Dockerintermediate
RESTexpert
GraphQLbeginner
SQLexpert
NoSQLintermediate
Machine Learningintermediate
CI/CDexpert
GitHub Actionsexpert
IaCexpert
CloudFormationexpert
Terraformbeginner
Grafanaintermediate
OpenAIexpert
Threat Modelingexpert
Mentoringexpert
Generative AIexpert
AI Coding Toolsintermediate
Cursorbeginner
Vercel v0beginner
Androidexpert
Postmanexpert
Jupyter Notebooksintermediate
Algorithmsintermediate
Agileexpert
DevOpsexpert
Object Oriented Designexpert
Programmingexpert
Data Structuresexpert
Innovationexpert
Securityexpert
System Designexpert
Team Leadershipexpert
Problem Solvingexpert
Communicationexpert

Reels

Reels were a core idea of Tech Residents, a startup I co-founded back in 2012. Reels are short audio clips that allowed developers to showcase their passion, personality, technical skills, and communication abilities, giving employers a unique way to evaluate candidates.

Although Tech Residents may be gone, the importance of effective communication remains. This section is a small time capsule of the Tech Residents project and a nod to the power of clear, engaging technical storytelling.

Tech Residents Landing Page

Highlight Reels

How I Cut Our $2500/month AWS Bill by 99%

War Story: A Nasty Android Bug

For or Against: AI Coding Assistants

Explain Bitcoin to Grandma

MISSL Launch: Changing Team Mindset

Education

Master of Science in Electrical Engineering

Northeastern University

2005 - 2007

Focus on computer engineering, architecture, and usability design.

Northeastern University logo
Decorative image
Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering

Northeastern University

2000 - 2005

Graduated Suma cum Laude • Recipient of the Sears B. Condit Award awarded for outstanding academic achievement • Finished runner-up in Senior Capstone Project Competition for building SAINT - a ticketing system for ski resorts that utilized RFID technology which allowed real-time search for party members.

Northeastern University logo

Projects

Professional AI Coaches
Professional AI Coaches

Dec 2024

I built an AI coach for myself to help me with entrepreneurship. I found it so useful I soon began building coaches for others. I've built AI coaches for marketing leaders, writers, product managers, and CEOs.

AI
OpenAI
Prompt Engineering
RAG
Entrepreneurship
Startups
Source Code Studios
Source Code Studios

Oct 2024

Experimenting with generative AI blending the worlds of technology and creativity.

Generative AI
OpenAI
Midjourney
Topaz Labs
Canva
Art
Technology
Creativity
e-Commerce
Storefront
Print-on-Demand
Ask PG
Ask PG

Feb 2023

To better understand LLM retrieval augmented generation (RAG), I built a website that would answer questions about startups using embeddings created from Paul Graham's essays. The site was built using Next.js, React, Tailwind CSS, OpenAI, and deployed as a dockerized lambda on AWS. I also explored vector databases including Pinecone.

AI
RAG
OpenAI
AWS
Lambda
Docker
Python
Next.js
React
Tailwind CSS
Beat the Streak
Beat the Streak

Apr 2018 - Oct 2022

To learn about machine learning, I built a model to predict hitting streaks and compete in the MLB Beat the Streak competition. I discovered that my intution about which baseball stats were most important were wrong. I was able to achieve a hit streak of over 30 games, landing me a temporary spot on the global leaderboard.

Machine Learning
AWS
Sagemaker
Lambda
Python
Pandas
Numpy
Data Science
Data Analysis
RSA Labs Crypto Club NFT
RSA Labs Crypto Club NFT

Dec 2021

As a gift for team members, I created a limited edition NFT Collection, the RSA Labs Crypto Club. NFTs were minted on the Ethereum blockchain and distributed to team members.

Ethereum
NFT
Blockchain
Solidity
Smart Contracts

Patents

Dynamic Access Controls Using Verifiable Claims
Dynamic Access Controls Using Verifiable Claims logo

Patent Number: 11,558,425

Year: Jan 2023

Authentication Based Upon Shared Secret Updates
Authentication Based Upon Shared Secret Updates logo

Patent Number: 11,463,430

Year: Oct 2022

Security Policy Exchange and Enforcement for Question Delegation Environments
Security Policy Exchange and Enforcement for Question Delegation Environments logo

Patent Number: 11,343,255

Year: May 2022

Access Controls for Question Delegation Environments
Access Controls for Question Delegation Environments logo

Patent Number: 11,258,603

Year: Feb 2022

Client-driven Shared Secret Updates for Client Authentication
Client-driven Shared Secret Updates for Client Authentication logo

Patent Number: 11,223,473

Year: Jan 2022

Location Assurance Using Location Indicators Modified by Shared Secrets
Location Assurance Using Location Indicators Modified by Shared Secrets logo

Patent Number: 11,128,638

Year: Sep 2021

Identity Assurance Using Posture Profiles
Identity Assurance Using Posture Profiles logo

Patent Number: 11,126,703

Year: Sep 2021

Policy-based Completion of Third Party Risk Assessments
Policy-based Completion of Third Party Risk Assessments logo

Patent Number: 20,210,241,192

Year: Aug 2021

Automatic Assignment of Tasks to Users in Collaborative Projects
Automatic Assignment of Tasks to Users in Collaborative Projects logo

Patent Number: 20,210,241,231

Year: Aug 2021

Biometric Authentication using Molecular Snapshots
Biometric Authentication using Molecular Snapshots logo

Patent Number: 11,055,389

Year: Jul 2021

Biometric Authentication Using Selected Manipulation of Biometric Samples
Biometric Authentication Using Selected Manipulation of Biometric Samples logo

Patent Number: 11,062,005

Year: Jul 2021

Authentication Based on Shared Secret Seed Updates for One-Time Passcode Generation
Authentication Based on Shared Secret Seed Updates for One-Time Passcode Generation logo

Patent Number: 11,032,271

Year: Jun 2021

User Authentication Using Biometric Representation of One-Time Passcodes
User Authentication Using Biometric Representation of One-Time Passcodes logo

Patent Number: 10,992,665

Year: Apr 2021

User Authentication Using Scene Composed of Selected Objects
User Authentication Using Scene Composed of Selected Objects logo

Patent Number: 10,949,524

Year: Mar 2021

Adaptive and Verifiable Bill of Materials
Adaptive and Verifiable Bill of Materials logo

Patent Number: 20,210,035,120

Year: Feb 2021

Influential Books

How to Win Friends and Influence People

by Dale Carnegie

Helped me improve my listening and communication skills and build better relationships.

The Design of Everyday Things

by Don Norman

Forever changed the way I think about design and usability.

Competing Against Luck

by Clayton Christensen

Introduced me to the concept of Jobs Theory and how to innovate based on customer needs.

Code Complete

by Steve McConnell

Taught me how to identify bad abstractions and write clean maintainable code.

DevOps Handbook

by Gene Kim, Patrick Debois, John Willis, Jez Humble

Changed how my teams deliver software. Helped me understand the importance of DevOps and how to implement it in an organization.

Get in Touch

I'd love to connect! Here's how you can find me: