Brian Christiansen
North Andover, Massachusetts, United States
365 followers
368 connections
365 followers
368 connections
About
Brian addresses problems holistically by focusing upon people's context, needs, tasks…
Activity
365 followers
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Brian Christiansen shared thisHey friends, I'm excited to share that I have accepted a position with Veoci helping to build out their product discipline alongside their growing crew and some awesome people, starting in their enterprise SaaS vertical. Veoci makes an innovative software platform for emergency operations, business continuity, crisis management, and disaster recovery. They make software that “helps the helpers” and is used by governments, higher education, healthcare, aviation, and enterprises of all types, around the world. The customers I've seen so far are big advocates of the product. If that's something that interests you, check out https://lnkd.in/evqCSajx to see what's open (remote, or local to New Haven, CT). If you don't see something that's a fit for you, but you're interested, feel free to ping me directly. They're all about referrals. That's how I got connected, and wound up taking a role that didn't yet exist. -- On a personal note, I'd like to thank everyone who reached out with ideas and opportunities over the past few months. Folks, it's not just polite to keep in contact with your friends and past colleagues. Right now, with this economy, job market, ghost job posts, and fake applicants who show up as a totally different person than who interviewed, your friends are likely your best route to your next role. From a company's perspective, being able to interview someone who is a known entity is a big deal. We live in interesting times, and I don't see it improving in the immediate future. Knowing someone has always been the best route, but never more so than right now. Let's take care of each other! 🤝🚀
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Brian Christiansen reposted thisBrian Christiansen reposted thisI get a lot of joy from connecting people to job opportunities that match their unique skills and areas of passion. I’ve done this as a hiring manager, but also informally for friends, family, and professional connections. I love that moment of spotting a unique role that could be a good fit for someone I know, and passing it along. Over the years, I’ve also curated my various newsletters and feeds to regularly surface job postings for companies and organizations doing interesting work. One particular focus area is organizations using product, technology, and design to advance natural resource conservation, tackle climate challenges, and support sustainable agriculture. Today, I’m starting a new exercise to share a semi-regular roundup of job postings I’ll call the Conservation & Agriculture Tech Jobs Roundup. My aim is to give greater visibility to some interesting roles for organizations doing important work, while helping folks find new mission-driven roles in a challenging job market. I’ll experiment a bit with format to make it more useful over time. Without further ado, here’s the first roundup featuring roles from Watershed, Ambrook, Planet, Aigen, and a bonus design role from AllTrails. ———————————————————————————————————— 🌳 Conservation & Agriculture Tech Jobs Roundup | October 29, 2005 🌳———————————————————————————————————— Senior Engineering Manager, Data Products | Watershed (San Francisco) https://lnkd.in/eGqyEQMp Design Engineer | Ambrook (Hybrid) https://lnkd.in/eWi-xqxa Senior Product Manager, Monitoring Imagery | Planet (US Remote) https://lnkd.in/euEpqrCA Senior Software Engineer (Edge Robotics) | Aigen (Redmond, WA) https://lnkd.in/eGpYXZFM Creative Lead, Design | AllTrails (US Remote) https://lnkd.in/esUgxZeR
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Brian Christiansen reposted thisBrian Christiansen reposted thisHey people! If you know of anyone looking for a seasoned cloud-first PHP application architect/engineer who likes API integrations, ETL, long walks on the beach, and Linux Admin/DevOps... I'm looking for a new gig. In the interim, if you have any quick-hit consulting overflow, I have some availability; let's talk?
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Brian Christiansen shared thisI’m looking for my next role as a Lead Product Designer or Product Manager. After six years with The Weather Company—and taking my first real professional break following July layoffs—I’m seeking my next challenge. ## What I’ve been doing Leading design for tools that meteorologists rely on every day, from routine forecasts to severe weather coverage. I worked at the intersection of product and design, partnering with PMs and engineers to ship products with 90% market share in broadcast meteorology. We balanced successful legacy tech with the cutting-edge (including user-facing AI/ML features for data-to-narrative generation), but always kept people at the center. We achieved consistent NPS growth, millions in renewed contracts, and most importantly, built tools that help keep people safe. ## What I do best - Facilitate discovery that uncovers real problems (not just symptoms) - Transform ambiguity and assumptions into traceable requirements with lean (or robust) research - Guide cross-functional teams through ambiguity to clarity - Speak the language of product, engineering, and executives alike - Get in the trenches and build using my UX Generalist skills. - I’ve *built* AI-enabled tools. I’m *building with* AI tools. It’s not a panacea, but #cautiousOptimist ## What I’m targeting - Roles: Lead Product Designer, Design Manager, Product Manager, Lead PM - Organizations: Particularly interested in mission-driven work, such as public interest and civic tech, education, but open to great teams solving real problems - Location: Remote-first (Boston-area hybrid for exceptional opportunities) ## How you can help 1. If your team needs someone who can define the right thing to build AND ensure it gets built right—let’s talk 2. If you know of interesting organizations hiring senior product/design talent—please connect us 3. Have an immediate need? I’m available for contracts while seeking my next full-time gig. 4. If you’re navigating a similar transition and want to compare notes—my inbox is open—or just “hi, it’s been a while!” I’ve enjoyed several such chats recently. 5. Leaving a comment will help spread my reach. Check out my work at brianchristiansen.com (new case study just added, more available to discuss). #OpenToWork #productDesign #productManager #UXGeneralist #UXLeadership #designThinking #BostonTech #ughHashtags
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Brian Christiansen reposted thisBrian Christiansen reposted thisSo Trump just appointed AirBnB co-founder Joe Gebbia as America's first "Chief Design Officer" to overhaul 26,000 government websites. If only they had an amazing team that was doing this work already. Oh wait, they did and they fired them... The sycophantic applause from X is chef's kiss perfection: "This is an inspired idea." - Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) "Another example of Trump Administration's unprecedented ability to assemble the world's best talent to execute on its bold vision." - Tyler Winklevoss "It's a great idea." - Brian Armstrong But here's what they conveniently forgot to mention: We already HAD this. In March 2025, DOGE eliminated 18F—the 90-person digital services team that spent a decade doing exactly this work. Not with tech bro fanfare, but with actual results: 🏆 18F's Greatest Hits: Login.gov - Secure access across government sites U.S. Web Design System - Standardized federal website design Cloud.gov - Modern cloud hosting for agencies Analytics.usa.gov - Real-time government web analytics IRS Direct File - Free online tax filing Weather.gov redesign with NOAA COVIDtests.gov - Free test ordering during pandemic Get.gov - Streamlined .gov domain requests Modernized Tax Court case management Civil Rights Division complaint systems 18F saved taxpayers millions by preventing bloated tech contracts and built platforms that actually work using agile development, user-centered design, and open-source code. Their reward? A midnight email calling them "non-essential" and immediate termination. Now we get a tech bro billionaire with zero government experience promising to fix 26,000 federal websites by July 4, 2026. Because apparently what government tech really needed was more VC magic dust and fewer people who actually understood how federal systems work. The real kicker? 85% of 18F staff who left over the years went to OTHER government tech positions, spreading their expertise across agencies. You know, the kind of institutional knowledge that takes years to build and seconds to destroy. #GovTech #DigitalTransformation #18F #DOGE #PublicService
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Brian Christiansen posted thisDo any of my contacts have a connection at the Wikimedia Foundation, preferably in their Product & Technology org, that they'd feel comfortable introducing me to?
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Brian Christiansen shared thisThe lead keeps getting bigger… it’s remarkable what our science team does. Bravo to my colleagues! If you’re not using The Weather Channel app or Weather.com for your personal forecast, you’re really missing out. I just skimmed the 200 page report, and all I can say is 😮🏆Brian Christiansen shared thisThe results are in: The Weather Company continues to be the world’s most accurate forecaster, according to ForecastWatch. And now, we’re nearly 4x more likely to be the most accurate than our next closest competitor. Better accuracy means better decisions, which is why we’re committed to delivering the best possible weather forecast to people and businesses everywhere. Learn how we do it and why it matters: http://spklr.io/6044B6bKe
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Brian Christiansen shared thisThis May marks my 6th year of work at The Weather Company. During that time I’ve learned a lot about weather bulletins including that the general public gets confused between watches and warnings. This is my favorite explanation I’ve found. Stay safe out there, everyone.
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Brian Christiansen shared thisWe are looking to bring aboard a new senior design teammate, focused around mobile. Does this describe you? Lots of thought provoking work to be done: https://lnkd.in/eRwrq9ir
Brian Christiansen commented on a post
1mo
I'll agree with Justin say Jeff Su is entertaining and approachable.
https://youtube.com/@jeffsu
I think the best writer/researcher on this is Ethan Mollick . He's a good follow on here, has a useful blog, and wrote the best book for truly doing stuff, called "Co-intelligence". What's great about it is it was written in 2024 and is still relevant. Buy/borrow it right now.
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Brian Christiansen liked thisBrian Christiansen liked thisIn early NASA flights, the engineering team used a flight computer with three redundant channels, all running the same math, and let them vote on each other's work. When one got it wrong, the other two outvoted it and the mission survived. This was a clever solution but I noticed a condition hiding inside the premise. The three channels have to fail independently. Different hardware with different reasons to go wrong. If a shared flaw emerges, they stop correcting each other and just agree, confidently and in unison. The single flaw could be laundered into something that feels like consensus. I've noticed a lot of people taking a similar view of AI. Imagine a row of AI models standing in as each other's backup, all trained on more or less the same internet. Three backups with one shared blind spot. Every vote comes back a yes.
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Brian Christiansen liked thisBrian Christiansen liked thisI want to present a simple thought experiment. Imagine a pull request comes into your queue. Nothing exotic, the kind of change that ships a hundred times a week on most engineering teams. At this point, most of us may dispatch an AI review before we even look at it. I have been working on an experimental swarm of AI agents who I send out to review the request before I look at it or it merges. They use the same underlying models in every one of them with the same code in front of all of them. The only thing that differs is how each agent's identity is conditioned. (How they are conditioned is wildly interesting, but that’s a topic for a different post) Most of them clear it, but one stops on a single line, a boundary case the others read right past. For anyone that has been in software development, it’s the kind of subtle miss that pages someone at 2am three weeks later. Once I had collected enough of these cases to measure real trends, I looked at the data and noticed about 58% of the issues the swarm catches are found by exactly one agent. One agent sees it and every other agent, looking at the identical code, walks right by. So if I'd run any single one of them alone, even a strong one, I'd have approved more than half of what the group caught. Same model. Same code. The difference was who I asked it to be. I have been talking a lot about the role of identity conditioning in model behavior, and have written about it in more detail here.
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Brian Christiansen liked thisBrian Christiansen liked thisI recently read a study out of ICML that looked at 350 language models with one question in mind: when two of them get something wrong, do they get it wrong the same way? They found that about 60% of the time on the benchmarks tested, they land on the identical wrong answer. Pure chance would put that near 33%. So when you poll several models for a second opinion, you're often getting the same mistake back in different handwriting. And it runs the wrong way. The more capable the models got, the more their errors lined up. The frontier systems agreed on their mistakes most of all. The Study: https://lnkd.in/eNPskesv
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Brian Christiansen reacted on thisBrian Christiansen reacted on thisOver the last few years I’ve had experiences that have reminded me that no day is guaranteed. I lost a colleague and dear friend, and spent 6 months recovering from a traumatic brain injury. With that, I want to center my days around what I love doing the most: helping people. I’m so excited to announce my business, The Parallax Practice! I’m offering career coaching that integrates engineering excellence with evidence-based psychological principles to help tech professionals achieve growth and longevity. These services are designed for VPs, Directors of Engineering, Engineering Managers, Team Leads, Tech Leads, and Staff/Senior Engineers. My background includes: • A decade of tech industry experience, having worked in diverse roles as an engineer, project manager, and people manager across a variety of domains-from user interface development and release engineering to quality assurance and Linux kernel development • Advanced technical foundations with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from UMass Lowell and Master of Science in Technical Management from Johns Hopkins University • Deep human insights through ongoing graduate training in Clinical Mental Health Counseling (CMHC) at Merrimack College Book a free 30-minute discovery call to map out how I can support _your_ career journey: https://lnkd.in/eQhsx5KH Or, you can reach me directly at Kate@TheParallaxPractice.com.
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Brian Christiansen liked thisBrian Christiansen liked thisFor the past several weeks, our small but mighty design team overhauled the entire Homebot design system by running a thorough audit using Claude. I instructed Claude to comb through hard code in Storybook to tell me what colors, components and variants were actually being used in production. From there, we were able to make quick decisions on which elements got to stay in the design system, and which ones got the axe. The results? We went from a bloated design system comprised of 282 colors and 88 component sets down to a focused system of 168 colors and 35 component sets! We also renamed all of the color primitives and their token aliases semantically and reformatted components to align with an 8-point grid system. The next step? I'm training Claude Design on our new system with proper guardrails and detailed documentation. It's still learning our complex design system but has already vastly sped up my workflow. For me, the real power of AI is in accelerating the work behind the scenes—the painstaking but important tasks that enable product designers to work more efficiently and intentionally. As one person, doing this manually would have taken months. With Claude, our team completed it in six weeks and created a thoughtful design system that improves how we work in both Figma and Claude.
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Brian Christiansen liked thisBrian Christiansen liked thisToday we turn 14 years old, and like every 14 year old out there, we believe we know everything but we really have no idea what we're doing. 🎂
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Brian Christiansen liked thisBrian Christiansen liked thisI’ve worked at the intersection of healthcare and technology for more than a decade because I believe good health is both important and personal for all of us. I’ve recently taken a new step on that journey and have joined athenahealth as a Director of Experience Design. In this role, I’m excited to help primary care practices and other parts of the healthcare ecosystem manage the data pipelines critical to care delivery. The first month has been jam-packed with a team retreat, customer site visit, AI training, and getting steeped in all the ways athena connects doctors, labs, hospitals, and parts of the healthcare ecosystem. As May comes to a close, I’m feeling thankful for the team of folks here who have welcomed me and excited about the opportunities in front of us!
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Brian Christiansen reacted on thisBrian Christiansen reacted on thisNEW! I just launched SureShot, a Chrome extension to make taking designer-quality website screenshots easy. SureShot bridges the gap between native screenshot capabilities and some slightly fancier web screenshotting apps. It offers faster and simpler control over adding browser chrome, drop shadows, corner radii, and more. This is my first Chrome extension, and thanks to our new robot overlords I found the process to be easy and straightforward, utilizing Gemini and Figma and leveraging Chrome's developer APIs. Add it to your Chrome toolbar, pin it, and make sure to rate it! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ https://lnkd.in/edJrhC75
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Education
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The University of Connecticut
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Activities and Societies: Instructional Resource Center, Institute for Teaching and Learning. SETA: Student Educational Technology Assistant Program., UConn Marching Band, UConn Pep Band.
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Jacalin Ding 丁嘉丽
What happens when designers miss the mark on when to provide the right amount of "design" vs time. Designers think business partners love to see high fidelity, do they? Not quite. Hear the honest feedback from a Product Leader worked with hundreds of designers in the past. 👇 In this week's episode (link in comments) , Teresa Huang and I share our experiences handles collaboration. - when to do sketches - when to provide high fi - when to propose co design #productdesign #productmanagement #collaboration
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David Hildebrand
Are IC enterprise designers unintentionally sabotaging their portfolios in this AI-obsessed market? If you’re a Product Designer updating your case studies… you’ll probably want to read this... I’m actively hiring two Sr-to-Lead Product Designers, and after reviewing a lot of portfolios recently, a pattern keeps repeating: 👉 Too many portfolios are leading with AI chatbot projects. Not sprinkled in… leading with them. Often multiple ones in the same portfolio as Case Study #1 and #2. Here’s the problem👇 AI chatbots are important, but they’re not the center of gravity for most enterprise / SaaS product teams. In the last six-nine months, many of these patterns are already shipped and commoditized. And now with agentic flows, the UI work becomes more about reviewing, validating, and confirming work AI has already completed behind the scenes. Which means… “Old school” multi-step, end-to-end product flows are still valid – with a twist. Because every IC job post right now is calling for “high craft” or “consumer-grade design” – it’s no longer acceptable for flows to simply “get the job done.” Hiring panels want to see refinement and polish in the final output. Otherwise you’ll get the feedback we give far too often: “The design thinking is great… but the visual design is just… [sigh/meh]… not quite there.” Visual craft always matters. Everywhere. At every company. Whether D2C or B2B or Enterprise. So if you’re refreshing your portfolio, here’s my ask as someone hiring in this tough market: Don’t over-index on AI chatbots just because they’re hot right now. Show me your complex, nuanced, multi-stage flows—the kind that prove you can handle the real product work most teams need. Just make sure they’re polished (ie. That “high craft” buzzword again), intentional, and tight. Because that’s what will actually differentiate you in 2025 and into 2026. And now the proverbial 🔌: If you’re a high-performing Sr. or Lead looking to innovate in the HR and Comp tech space, holler at me in my DMs or Comments. Thanks! 🙏
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