Kyle Browning

I started writing code when I was 14, tinkering with websites in my bedroom in Texas. What began as curiosity about how things worked turned into a career spanning nearly two decades. Along the way, I've had the privilege of building products used by millions of people, and the even greater privilege of leading teams of talented engineers who taught me as much as I taught them.

The Journey

My career has taken some interesting turns. I spent my early years deep in the Drupal ecosystem, eventually creating the Services module that now powers over 70,000 websites. That experience taught me the power of open source: the idea that code you write in your spare time can end up helping developers around the world.

But I always wanted to build things that consumed APIs, not just create them. When Apple released the iPhone SDK, I saw my chance. I dove into Objective-C and never looked back. There was something magical about building apps that lived in people's pockets, software they'd use every day.

When Swift came along, I made the switch and fell in love with the language. There's something elegant about Swift that just clicks for me. That passion led me to create APNSwift, an HTTP/2 library for Apple Push Notifications that's now part of the Swift Server Community and used by companies including Apple themselves.

What I love most about this work is contributing to products that help people in their everyday lives. Whether it's helping someone find a meaningful connection, keeping fans closer to the music they love, or delivering sports news to subscribers, there's something deeply satisfying about building software that becomes part of someone's daily routine.

After years as an individual contributor, I made the leap to engineering management when I joined The Athletic. It was a natural evolution: I'd spent so long learning how to build great software that I wanted to help others do the same.

Want the formal version? View my full resume for the complete rundown of my experience and skills.

Building Products That Matter

At The Athletic, I led a mobile engineering team of 4 during a period of explosive growth. We took the subscriber base from 600,000 to 1.2 million, doubling in size while maintaining the quality that subscribers expected.

Before that, at Warner Music Group, I managed a team of 12 engineers across fullstack, mobile, and backend, building the infrastructure behind some of the biggest names in music. There's something surreal about seeing your code power experiences for millions of fans.

These days, I'm at Eternal, where I'm building health technology from the ground up. It's the most meaningful work I've done: architecting AWS infrastructure, writing iOS apps in SwiftUI, and writing Go code that handles patient data. When you're working on something that directly impacts people's health, every decision carries weight.

What Drives Me

I believe the best engineers are the ones who never stop learning. Even after 17 years, I still get excited about new technologies. I still read documentation for fun. I still have side projects that keep me up too late.

But I've also learned that technical skills are only part of the equation. The most impactful work happens when you can bring people together, when you can take a group of smart, opinionated engineers and help them build something none of them could have built alone.

Beyond the Screen

When I'm not coding, you'll find me hanging out with my family (wife, son) or out on the golf course. I live in Sacramento these days, and I'm a firm believer that the best ideas come when you step away from the keyboard.

Let's Connect

I'm always interested in talking shop, whether it's about Swift, distributed systems, engineering leadership, or just tech in general. Feel free to reach out.

• GitHub - Where I spend too much of my time
• LinkedIn - For the professional stuff
• Email - The direct line