The record so far
The summary lives here; the always-current long-form CV lives at cv.alexbradner.com, andLinkedIn is the best way to reach me.
Revision History
Optus · Engineering Manager
Leading multiple software engineering teams at the start of an ambitious transformation: modernising and simplifying the Operational Support Systems stack with the best practices, standards and agentic-enabled engineering processes 2026 has to offer.
Atlassian · Principal Engineer
Teamwork Platform: the smart-linking layer that connects Jira, Confluence and third-party tools, and feeds the knowledge graph behind Atlassian’s AI. Stepped into Engineering Manager duties for a 15-person team from day zero during a parental leave.
Simplytics · Founder
Simplytics AI came first: eight months building democratised, AI-assisted analytics, now parked. These days Simplytics is the home of Spritz Events.
Project entry →AirRobe · Principal Engineer / Head of Engineering
Circular-fashion marketplace. Built the end-to-end personalisation suite turning customer behaviour into curated feeds and emails, with 10× the engagement of manual curation.
CBA / x15 Ventures (Cheddar) · Principal Engineer
Startup pace inside Australia’s biggest bank: architecture, strategy, mentoring and hands-on product engineering for a Gen-Z shopping platform.
Airtasker · Senior Engineer → Technical Lead
Five years, four teams led. The SEO engine still powering the primary acquisition channel, two recommendation systems with major conversion uplift, and international launches across the UK, NZ, Singapore and the US.
Foogi · Co-founder & CTO
Smart-scheduling startup that raised over US$400k in seed funding and came within a whisker of acquisition by Microsoft.
Project entry →Central China Normal University · English Teacher & CS Tutor
Taught English and tutored computer science during exchange in Wuhan.
Intersect Australia · Sysadmin → QA → Junior Engineer
First industry steps, in eResearch infrastructure.
Haymarket Media · Technical Copywriter
PC Authority, Atomic (Maximum Powered Computing) and ITNews.
Leadership in Practice
Turned a fragile, bottom-heavy team with a bus factor of one into an autonomous, cross-functional unit with a bus factor of two or more, all while absorbing five graduates and a junior in a single year.
Defect-triage and release-manager rotations, show-and-tell sessions, and a What/Why/How review discipline that surfaces architectural problems before a line of code is read.
Push-button, sub-ten-minute GitOps deployments that replaced tens of hours a month of manual release labour, and the errors that came with it.
Structured 1:1s split into tactical and growth tracks, SMART growth portfolios, and specific before-and-after coaching on presentations and written communication.
Acting as the tech-debt circuit breaker, three questions at a time: what is the underlying problem, why are we solving it, and why are we solving it this way?
Roadmap decisions weighed from every seat at the table (end users, support staff, regulators and the business itself), because good outcomes have to work for all of them.
Technical Skills
There are others; these are the ones I consider fresh.
Education
- BSc (Computer Science)University of New South Wales, Australia (2013)
- Language Certificate HSK 4Central China Normal University
Spoken Languages
- English
- 中文 · 普通话 (Mandarin Chinese)
- Español (Spanish)