Brandon Figarella
Product Engineer
A Product Engineer who owns the full loop: researching tech stacks, architecting systems, designing surfaces, and shipping the code. Performant UIs in React and Next.js. Scalable backends in Node.js, Python, and Rust. End-to-end ownership across every layer.
Education
University of California, Santa Cruz
Bachelor of Arts in Creative Technologies
Dean's Honors (Winter 2025, Spring 2025); Creative Technologies Program Representative
Expected June 2026
GPA: 3.90
West Valley College
Associate of Arts in UX and App Design
May 2023
Projects
WavHaven
Data-Driven Music Marketplace
- •Spearheaded a UX redesign based on user journey mapping that cut producer upload times by 75% and earned 90% positive user feedback.
- •Engineered the complete frontend using Next.js and TypeScript, with Zustand for complex global state management (audio player, cart).
- •Developed a scalable serverless backend using a CQRS pattern with Next.js Server Actions and Python Supabase Edge Functions.
- •Implemented an AI discovery engine using PostgreSQL with pgvector for high-speed semantic similarity searches on audio embeddings.
- •Established a CI/CD pipeline with Vitest for unit tests and Playwright for end-to-end tests to ensure code quality.
Omnidex
Desktop Application for Unreal Engine Asset Management
- •Architected an efficient asset discovery experience that significantly reduced search time, based on prototypes validated with users.
- •Built a highly interactive and customizable multi-pane UI with Vue.js, Pinia, and TypeScript, featuring virtualized scrolling.
- •Utilized the Tauri (Rust) backend to perform high-speed local indexing and interact directly with SQLite for robust offline-first capabilities.
Skills
Frontend:
React, Next.js (App Router), Vue.js, Tailwind CSS, Zustand, Pinia, shadcn/ui
Backend:
Node.js, Next.js Server Actions, Python, Rust (Tauri), Supabase, CQRS Pattern
Programming Languages:
TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Rust, SQL, HTML/CSS
UX/UI Design:
User Research, Wireframing, Prototyping, User Flows, Design Systems, Figma
Databases & Data:
PostgreSQL, SQLite, pgvector, Embedding Generation, AI Similarity Search
Infrastructure Tools:
Docker, Git, CI/CD, Vercel, Vitest, Playwright, Stripe, Clerk, PostHog