Aubron Headshot

👋, I'm Aubron.

I make products for the web, as well as the teams and practices that effectively deliver them.

I've gained a reputation for Design Systems, with a passion for delivering unique and consistent product experiences across devices and surfaces. This extends to both the technical and organizational needs inherent to that level of cohesion.

Most recently, I've been leading the Google Cloud Design System Teams on a mission to completely revamp the console's Design System strategy, technically and organizationally.

I am currently seeking Engineering Leadership roles across companies of all sizes. Take a look at some of my past work, and reach out if you might have a good fit.

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Aubron Wood

Sustainable Typescript Products and Teams


Google Cloud Logo
Google Cloud Logotype

Engineering Lead for Cloud Material Design

July 2020 - July 2022

Background image of Cranes and Construction

Design System

Cloud Material Design

Palette

Fonts

Google Sans, Roboto

Technologies

Angular Logo
Angular
Typescript Logo
Typescript
GraphQL Logo
GraphQL
Google CloudSeattle, WA

Cloud Design System Engineering

Technical Lead Manager (TLM)

Technical Lead (TL)

Senior Frontend Engineer

Google Cloud Console's UI

TL;DR - Led a multi-year mission to reinvent Cloud Console's frontend strategy by overhauling its Design System approach and surrounding tooling ecosystem.

The Google Cloud Web Console is likely one of the largest enterprise Angular applications in the world, if not the largest, and I led its Design System team, responsible for delivering the right tools for thousands of downstream Google engineers to build feature pages.

The Design System team had taken on an extremely centralized role in frontend development, something that was hurting product-wide velocity, as well as the team itself. Additionally, there was a strong business need to update the styling of the platform to the new, updated guidelines of Google Material, but the platfrom had been unable to do so for years due to millions of lines of existing frontend code.

As the strategic and technical lead for the Design System team, I drove change to reinvent the team and ecosystem, decentralizing UI development for the product in the process.

Cloud Design System Team Logo
Cloud Design System Team

When I came on the team, it was consistently underwater, with work planning largely being an exercise in largest fire, and a number of efforts underway to try and stem the bleeding.

As TLM, I largely rebuilt the practices and rituals of the cross-functional Design System teams into something that provided stability, value, and reasonable expectations, rather than constant fire drills.

  • Made Cloud Design System a part of the larger Material Design org, and served as the primary voice for Cloud.
  • Made targeted technical changes to operating model, renegotiating expectations with feature teams and horizontals.
  • Advised, proposed, advocated for, and planned larger technical frontend strategy with Director-level leadership.
  • Reprocessed our backlog, splitting it from an accumulating pile into a number of tracked queues and burndowns.
  • Directly triaged issues, and provided Accessibility support to feature teams alongside a11y horizontals.
Google Material Migration Logo
Google Material Migration

As part of the overall strategy of updating the Design System across the Console to the latest Google Material specifications, I proposed, advocated for, and then drove execution on an overhaul-level Design System migration.

Whereas previous attempts to update the Console depended on brute force solutions and/or manual migrations, this strategy enabled the console to be updated with minimal changes to feature team code, something previously thought impractical.

  • Leading voice in Director-level conversations on need, capability, and options for next-steps.
  • Created and presented decks, demos, and Technical Design Documents to various org audiences.
  • Drove the larger effort, helping to plan technical needs from GraphQL infrastructure, app shell.
  • Supported migrating feature teams as primary engineering point of contact.

Bandwidth Logo
Bandwidth Logotype

Frontend Lead and Product Owner

August 2018 - July 2020

Design System

Foundry Components

Palette

Fonts

Overpass

Technologies

React Logo
React
Typescript Logo
Typescript
GraphQL Logo
GraphQL
BandwidthRaleigh, NC

Dashboard Frontend (Forge)

Technical Product Owner

Manager

Senior Frontend Engineer


Developer Experience (DevX)

Engineering Lead

Manager


Identity and Authorization (Keystone)

Manager

Bandwidth Dashboard's UI

TL;DR - Managed and drove alongside multiple teams to accomplish cross-functional business goals as the Technical Product Owner for Bandwidth Dashboard's frontend strategy.

The Bandwidth Dashboard is a developer console for Bandwidth CPaaS customers to manage their telephony services and products. I helped to drive this primary frontend touchpoint by unblocking a messy and protracted migration, and then drove our Frontend, Developer Exerience, and Auth teams to accomplish a number of cross-functional goals.

Bandwidth had a centralized frontend team, and that team had been working to incrementally deliver an overhaul of the Dashboard from GWT to React, but architectural issues with co-delivery, as well as a propensity to redesign pages in the process, was killing velocity. Upon joining the team, I successfully lobbied for a pivot to a lift-and-shift style model that enabled us to unblock the work and deliver a full overhaul of the product, after over a year of stalled progress.

Expanding my role into a full Technical Product Owner for the dashboard, I worked with product to deliver a number of meaningful, cross-functional objectives across my three teams.

Bandwidth Dashboard Overhaul Logo
Bandwidth Dashboard Overhaul

Bandwidth had historically been utilizing their Java feature developers to code the UI for the dashboard utilizing GWT, but had decided they wanted a more modern frontend stack.

The project to accomplish this had been stalled for some time, as there was an insistence that the new application be incrementally delivered, while the GWT pages continued to run the page chrome and crucial services. I successfully advocated for a more practical approach that enabled a React-only experience, and unblocked the project as a result.

  • Pulled back from-scratch design system strategy that wasn't aligned with team size, pivoted to a theme on an existing component library
  • Drove product/director-level conversations and presentations on need, strategy
  • Delivered a fully react dashboard overhaul in 8 months, after > 1 year of stalled progress.
Cross-Functional Impact Logo
Cross-Functional Impact

As Technical Product Owner for the console frontend, and a manager of three important cross-functional teams (Frontend, identity/auth, and developer experience), I was able to plan, enable, and execute far-reaching strategic change to the product, including:

  • Enabling bring-your-own single sign-on by overhauling our login experience and adding additional identity infrastructure.
  • Audited identity/frontend intersection points, removing security risk through the new React interface.
  • Pushed GraphQL microservices as an alternative to the dominant monolithic service design paradigm
  • Began moving poorly documented XML apis to OpenAPI documented json endpoints, decreasing frontend bloat in the process.

Immersion Media Logotype

CTO & Cofounder

October 2015 - July 2018

Design System

Stadium System

Palette

Fonts

Ubuntu, Helvetica

Technologies

React Logo
React
Typescript Logo
Typescript
GraphQL Logo
GraphQL
Immersion MediaFayetteville, NC

ScoreShots

Chief Technology Officer

Engineering Lead

Founding Engineer


Immersion Media

Lead Developer

Development Manager

ScoreShots' UI

TL;DR - Cofounded a B2B Web Infographics product for college/pro sports teams. Drove most aspects of the 10-15 person startup until profitability.

ScoreShots is a sports infographics tool designed to enable Sports Information Directors and other untrained staff to post and schedule templated infographics to social media with live and easy to customize data.

I was the primary architect for the MVP, initial release, and overhauled product that is in use today. During this time I operated as both a lead engineer and CTO, coding many of the crucial features alongside generally running operations, as well as preparing business plans and pitch decks.

In 2021, ScoreShots was sold to athletics conglomerate PrestoSports, and is now their key Infographics product.

ScoreShots Next

ScoreShots Next was a revamp to our existing product that I largely designed and architected. It rebuilt the shaky backend of the product to use GraphQL microservices, as well as redesigning the brand into a consistent look and feel via a Design System.

  • Canvas / React App, also delivered as PWA for mobile
  • Hundreds of clients, including the USGA and Dallas Mavericks
  • Appeared and gave talks at national collegiate trade shows
  • Serverless GraphQL microservices, Prisma 1 ORM
  • Material UI-driven design system, enabling consistent look
  • Photoshop-style UI enabled advanced editing for power users
ScoreShots Video

ScoreShots Video was a cloud rendering pipeleine that enabled web-based video editing from any device. By compiling and utilizing custom ffmpeg binaries in serverless environments, I was able to cheaply and effectively offer on-demand rendering and editing of video graphics, including ones driven by statistics and After Effects motion.

  • ffmpeg Lambda rendering streamed files in and out of s3
  • Enabled direct AE file hand-offs from Designers to Eng
  • Added video overlay effects to image posts, expanding impact
  • Fully mobile-compatible video editing flow
  • Architected pipelines for PSD/After Effects ingestion