I’m Brian Smith, a Technical Writer at MDN Web Docs based in Berlin, Germany. You might spot me on GitHub as @bsmth and you can see some stats on ossinsight for @bsmth that paint a good picture of my open source work.
My background
For the past 20 years, I’ve worked with web technologies, written and maintained content, and scaled businesses with technical and product development. I love building software products, especially open-source projects, and I enjoy identifying and solving systemic issues in large platforms that have lots of moving parts.
Before joining the MDN team at Mozilla, I was Head of Content for a YC-backed open-source time series database called QuestDB. At QuestDB, I was deeply involved in helping the CTO and CEO build a company that went from seed round right through to a successful $12M Series A.
I first started working with tech companies in 2014, initially through UX testing roles, which eventually led me to dive deep into principles of software development lifecycle. I started my career as a full-time technical writer in 2016, although my responsibilities have often widened to support product teams in many different aspects.
In purely technical roles, I maintained the language specification of a strongly-typed superset of JavaScript that was built from scratch. I also maintained and managed REST API documentation for cloud services for mobile network operators.
Outside of work, I love traveling around Europe, good coffee spots, and using music gear as long as it doesn’t have a screen.
Contact me
You can get in touch here:
- @bsmth.de on Bluesky
- linkedin.com/bsmth
- email me at
contact@this domain
Experience
Mozilla — Staff Technical Writer
Aug 2022 – Present Berlin, Germany
I work on MDN Web Docs, an open-source project that documents web platform technologies like CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and Web APIs.
I maintain 13,700 pages of en-US documentation for 15 million monthly visitors who want to learn how the web works.
I help keep wheels of the platform moving, which means filling content gaps, implementing and improving automations, making contributing easier, bringing feedback to engineering and product, reviewing content, GitHub administration, and various other chores.
I support MDN’s mission to provide a blueprint for a better internet and empower a new generation of developers and content creators to build it.
QuestDB — Head of Content
Jan 2021 – Aug 2022 Berlin, Germany
Wearer of many hats, mainly ran technical content from reference documentation to tutorials, blog posts, and user guides. I managed community contributions, and the planning and executing on long term content strategy. I intimately supported many aspects of growth of the company from a $2M seed stage through a $15M Series A.
Technical Writer at eMnify
Dec 2020 – Sep 2021 Berlin, Germany
I built and maintained the REST API documentation using Open API specification. To encourage the developer community to use our API, I created demo applications on AWS. I ran documentation deployment, customer-facing user guides & tutorials documented with Asciidoctor. I ran webinars & product training and built example apps that used Raspberry Pi & LTE development boards.
Technical Writer at enfore
Feb 2018 – Jul 2020 Berlin, Germany
I maintained the language spec for N4JS, a TypeScript-like language. I owned internal architecture and design documentation written in LaTeX and user-facing tutorials and guides. We took a docs-as-code method deploying static HTML to S3, using custom Docker images for our toolchain.
Google Android Auto UX Tester
Oct 2015 – Feb 2016 Berlin, Germany
I tested Google Android Auto and evaluated it according to Nielsen’s usability heuristics. I conducted screencasting of the sessions, and after testing, I filed detailed issues with reproducible steps on usability improvements that could be made.
Technical Content Writer (Freelance)
Jan 2011 – Nov 2015 Berlin, Germany
Created technical content for startups and small businesses. I most enjoyed helping brick and mortar businesses go from zero to online, and eventually scale e-commerce systems when needed. Specialized in technical SEO, static site generation, Wordpress maintenance, CI/CD, backend development, domain management, CDNs, etc.