About

Hello! My name is Brian Gardner. I'm a software developer with a passion for teaching others how to build cool things. I live in Savannah, Georgia with my wonderful wife, Carley, and our daughters, Ava Grace and Maisie. We both love to cook for our friends and family, and travel around the world.

Education

I enrolled at Georgia Tech in 2008 as an Aerospace Engineering student. In my second year I took a Matlab course that ended up changing everything — I found that I loved programming, and that pulled me into more CS electives. One class led to another, and eventually I made it official and switched my major to Computer Science. I graduated with a B.S. with honors in 2012.

Work

I'm currently a Staff Android Developer at Cash App, where I work on the release automation and tooling team. My focus is building testing infrastructure that scales across Android, iOS, and Web — including Trailblaze, an AI-driven end-to-end testing library I created that standardized testing practices and accelerated QA productivity across the team. I also lead initiatives around AI-driven developer workflows and spend a lot of time mentoring engineers at all levels.

Before Cash App, I spent nearly a decade at Big Nerd Ranch as an Android developer, instructor, and team manager. I co-authored the fourth edition of Android Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide. Teaching and writing about Android development is what led me to start this blog.