Grant Damron

Summary

I am a musician (first) and software engineer (second). As a musician, I'm really into creating generative music. I've been making it in some form for decades. It's the reason I'm also an engineer.

As an engineer, I am proud to be an AI-first, product-oriented generalist who can dig into any problem. I've also had the joy of leading many technical teams over the years. Despite my generalist and leadership leanings, there are a few classes of projects I most often find myself working on:

Creator Tools: This is the big one. Ultimately, I'm obsessed with making things. By extension, I'm even more obsessed with making things that help other people making things.
0-1 MVP Development: As a product-oriented engineer, validating ideas is my favorite thing to do. On larger scale, that means starting a new product from scratch and taking it to market, building all the necessary teams along the way.
Legacy Systems: There might be something wrong with me, but I love the detective work of getting to know a system that everyone else is afraid to touch. I take pleasure in documenting them and charting a path forward for maintaining, upgrading, or replacing them.
Paying Down Tech Debt: I don't see tech debt as an inherently bad thing. It’s an investment in a product's future, but it's a loan that must repaid eventually. For me, it's a uniquely satisfying process.

And as a generalist, I am language and technology agnostic. That said, some of the tools I’ve been working with most recently include:

Backend development on AWS using Node, Python, and Golang. I tend to lean toward serverless, event-driven systems, but I’ll use the right tool for the job and strive to adhere to the principles of Frugal Architecture ↗ .
Mobile development for iOS using Swift and SwiftUI. I’ve worked in Flutter and native Android development as well, but I’ve always been most comfortable in iOS. It was my first love as a developer.
Full-stack web development using frameworks like React, Tailwind and Next.js. I’m also a huge fan of GraphQL as a backend-for-frontend.

Recent Experience

Software Consulting // ilusiv

2024-Present // Creator Tools, Music, etc

I have been consulting with companies to do strange and wonderful things with music and media. Such as:

Leading the implementation of an interactive music engine in Swift, using AVFoundation, as interim Head of Engineering of a stealth-mode startup.
Working with researchers and users to build musicology reports for copyright infringement on record label content.
Making document format and software tools for creating generative music.
Owning engineering of internal tools for translating the Buddhist canon from Tibetan to English.
Building pipelines for processing, understanding, and delivering licensed AI training data.
Creating a low cost solution for 24/7 live streams of generative music (i.e., can run in AWS free tier or on a Raspberry Pi)

NextJs, TypeScript, GraphQL, Swift, Three.js, Rust, Python, AWS, iOS, Android, ChucK

Head of Engineering // Aimi

2022-2024 // Generative AI, Music

I was the founding member of the production engineering team, an effort that had previously been outsourced. I scaled the team from one person (me) to multiple teams encompassing Android, iOS, web, desktop, and backend development. As an engineering leader and product owner, my approach was to define the foundational patterns of our apps, services, and process with the goal of handing them off to be improved by other members of the team as it grew. The extent to which I was hands-on as an engineer or focused on facilitating others varied depending on the needs of the team and our products. My overriding goal is always to foster a culture and design processes that promote rapid iteration, creativity, and a healthy team.

Led the company’s globally distributed engineering org, championing cross-functional collaboration and data-driven development. Most teams were stream-oriented, with some focused on research and cross-team support.
Owned engineering and product strategy for all public offerings, including native mobile apps for interacting with real-time generative music, desktop apps for creating experiences, live YouTube streams, and core technologies.
Led a modernization effort of our legacy stack, migrating from an unreliable monolith to a suite of domain-driven services on AWS, also adding future-forward infrastructure to improve scalability, observability and performance.

TypeScript, Python, C++, Swift, Kotlin, Electron, iOS, Android, AWS

Senior Software Engineer // Splice

2021-2022 // Music

Splice is a cloud-based music creation platform providing, audio loop, software instrument plugins, and creator tools that help musicians realize their visions. I was the first member of the Long-Term Bets team, reporting directly to the CEO. In addition to being an individual contributor, I helped grow the team to include multiple engineers and a designer, serving as an informal team lead and product manager.

Hired and managed a small, distributed team of engineers and one designer focused on long-term strategic bets.
Designed a new graph-based data architecture for managing music projects that might include components from DAW projects and sample collections to written notes and voice memos.
Integrated the graph architecture into the backend of the CoSo app. This allowed for CoSo Stacks to be shared easily across users and applications.
Helped bring the Studio product from the legacy Desktop app to the new one and created the initial integration of CoSo, the company's generative AI product.
Updated the internal Ableton Live parser to support exporting content from the CoSo mobile app as DAW sessions.

Golang, TypeScript, C++, Angular, Electron, AWS

Technical Director (Head of Engineering) // Enklu

2019-2021 // Augmented Reality

Enklu Cloud was the Google Docs for Augmented Reality. The company's software allowed creative teams to collaboratively edit 3D content and instantly deploy experiences to Mixed Reality devices. I joined Enklu as a Lead and grew to manage the entire Engineering organization. Since the team was relatively small, I always remained a hands-on engineer.

Led the engineering and product teams to develop Enklu Cloud, an Augmented Reality runtime built on top of Unity. This codebase is primarily C# and JavaScript.
Extended our containerized back-end services, hosted on Microsoft Azure. Services for authoring content are written primarily in Node.Js while the multiplayer services are written in .NET Core.
Design training materials for junior and aspiring developers. All members of the team also participated in teaching sessions for the public and partners.
Redesigned an existing asset pipeline to be more event-driven, scalable, and cost-efficient.
Partnered with Meow Wolf to create an experience that controlled and responded to physical devices in the House of Eternal Return.

C#, Node.Js, React, Azure, HoloLens, Azure

Director of Engineering // Nomadic VR

2017-2019 // Location-Based VR

Nomadic was a platform for creating and administering location-based VR experiences, where users interact with objects in the real world while also engaging with a virtual environment. I joined as an individual contributor and grew to lead the engineering team.

Designed and implemented on-premise services to manage IoT devices, concurrent multiplayer gameplay sessions, and motion capture in C, C#, and C++.
Architected cloud-based infrastructure (on AWS) for managing player accounts, operator accounts, ticketing, real-time analytics and leaderboards.
Created a software distribution system for deploying game content and internal applications to on-premise servers, embedded devices, and backpack computers.
Created web applications in Vue.Js that venue partners used to administer games and internal teams used to monitor operations.
Collaborated with internal teams to create tools to help them visualize, control, and understand experiences.
Managed Nomadic's SDKs and tools that allowed content partners to create immersive experiences without having access to the full-scale physical environment.

C#, Node.js, C++, Vue.js, Serverless, Motive, Unity, IoT, AWS

Senior Software Engineer // PullString

2015-2017 // Conversational AI

PullString developed tools for crafting computer conversations during the first wave of chatbots and conversational AI. Alexa, Cortana, and Google Home were released during this period. I focused on integrating our core technologies with external services and developing SDKs for external users to do the same.

Developed new features in C++/Python/Go for PullString Author, a tool for creating interactive conversations.
Integrated 3rd party APIs into Author, including the Microsoft Bot Framework, Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant.
Led development and strategy for our open source SDKs in Objective-C, Swift, JavaScript, C#, and other languages.
Led development of a .NET platform for conversing with 3D characters on Skype, in partnership with Microsoft.
Provided technical guidance to internal and external clients, including Mattel, iHeartRadio, Activision, and Amazon.

Golang, C++, Python, Docker, AWS, JavaScript, C#, Objective-C, Swift, Java, Unity

Creative Technical Architect // Razorfish

2014-2015 // Rapid Prototyping and R&D

SapientRazorfish is one of the world's largest digital agencies. I was a member of the Creative Technology team in San Francisco. Our focus was product discovery for current or prospective clients.

Rapid prototyping, primarily of mobile apps, for clients such as Honda, T-Mobile, Kia, and Best Buy.
Developed a real-time, semi-autonomous customer service platform using WebRTC and Speech to Text. Messages and visual content were synchronized between a customer’s phone and an agent’s desktop application.

iOS, Swift, Objective-C, C# Unity, Android, Java

Software Engineer // Zynga

2013-2014 // Social Games

Full stack mobile development on some the most widely played social games, including Zynga Poker and Words With Friends.

Feature development development on the native mobile and Unity clients for Poker; DAU on mobile crossed 1 million for the first time during this period.
Helped rebuild a Single Sign On product used in such games as Solstice Arena and Draw Something 2.

iOS, Objective-C, C++, Android, Java, PHP, C#, Unity

Freelance Music Composition // ilusiv

2002-Present // Stage, Screen, and Immersive Environment

Over the years, I have composed dozens of compositions, varying from traditional, notated compositions and commercial scores to interactive installations and generative works that exist only as code.

Creating a serverless framework from streaming dynamically generated audio for generative compositions.
Continuously composing Improvisations, generative musical sketches using a variety of languages. The intention is to explore a different musical idea each week and release the results as code.
Created Paramitas, where users are encouraged to solve a tangible, musical puzzle by playing with a set of spherical objects on a small table. Solving the puzzle uncovers a pre-composed work for solo violin.

Chuck, JavaScript, AWS, Player Piano, C/C++, Swift, Objective C, Arduino, Processing, Cinder

Education

M.S., Computer Science // New York University // New York, NY
M.M., Music Composition // New York University // New York, NY
B.M., Music Composition // Berklee College of Music // Boston, MA