Summary

Hands-on technical leader with 10+ years of experience building SaaS products, mentoring engineers, shaping technical direction, and operating high-availability production systems. Deep background across backend architecture, React frontends, GraphQL APIs, production reliability, DevOps, security, compliance support, performance tuning, AI-assisted engineering workflows, open-source contribution, and delivery process.

Leadership & Impact

Led engineering execution across product planning, architecture, delivery, QA, infrastructure, security, compliance support, and incident response.
Led the technical evolution of SmarterQueue from a pre-launch product into a mature SaaS platform with recurring revenue, reliable production operations, and a maintainable product architecture.
Architected the full rebuild from a legacy PHP5 / jQuery application into a modern React + Apollo frontend and GraphQL API, including a new multi-organization, multi-workspace, multi-user product model.
Raised engineering standards across code review, QA, CI/CD, automated tests, branch-based environments, local Docker onboarding, deployment tooling, documentation, technical policies, and AI-assisted engineering workflows.

Core Strengths & Skills

Leadership: Technical direction, mentoring, delivery process, code review, QA coordination

Frontend / API: React, Apollo, GraphQL

Backend / Data: PHP, Symfony, MySQL, Redis, Elasticsearch

Infrastructure / Operations: AWS, Linux, Docker, Ansible, GitLab CI/CD, production reliability, incident response, security, compliance, performance tuning

AI / LLM Workflows: Code-review support, QA summaries, implementation planning, shared development guidance

Open Source & Projects

SmarterQueue API libraries: Authored public PHP API clients for social platform integrations.
- github.com/SmarterQueue/Instagram-Graph-API-PHP
- github.com/SmarterQueue/Threads-API-PHP
GraphQLite: Contributed commits to the open-source GraphQL library.
- github.com/thecodingmachine/graphqlite/commits/master/?author=MattBred
Drupal Commerce: Contributed commits to Drupal Commerce core and related commerce modules.
- github.com/drupalcommerce/commerce/commits/8.x-2.x/?author=MattBred
- drupal.org/u/mbreden
Personal projects: Recent and older side projects.

Experience

SmarterQueue

SaaS platform for social media content planning, publishing, and automation | smarterqueue.com

Remote | 2018-Present

CTO

Provided technical direction and led engineering execution across product architecture, backend systems, frontend development, infrastructure, security, reliability, and delivery process.
Partnered with business and product stakeholders to turn high-level goals into technical plans that accounted for customer experience, operational risk, business rules, and long-term maintainability.
Led delivery through planning, code review, mentoring, QA coordination, documentation, release preparation, and process improvements while staying hands-on in implementation and production debugging.
Architected and led a complete rebuild from a legacy PHP5 / jQuery-UI application to a React + Apollo single-page application backed by a new GraphQL API.
Designed the platform shift from single-account usage to a multi-organization, multi-workspace, multi-user model, requiring new authorization boundaries, data relationships, product flows, and migration paths.
Owned the production infrastructure and DevOps surface, including AWS services, Linux servers, deployments, access control, secrets handling, monitoring, backups, alerting, and incident response for a platform with 99.999% uptime since the full rebuild launched two years ago.
Created and maintained repeatable engineering foundations across GitLab CI/CD, automated tests, static analysis, deployment tooling, dynamic branch environments, local Docker onboarding, and release management.
Managed the technical side of GDPR, PCI, penetration-test follow-up, AWS security auditing, and third-party social network platform audits, including policies for server configuration, development practices, and secrets handling.
Improved scalability and operability through Redis-backed background workers, asynchronous processing, Elasticsearch / Kibana logging, and critical MySQL query optimization.
Authored public PHP API clients for social platform integrations, including SmarterQueue/Instagram-Graph-API-PHP and SmarterQueue/Threads-API-PHP.
Expanded engineering capability with AI-assisted workflows for code review, QA summaries, implementation planning, and shared LLM development guidance.

Acro Media

E-commerce agency building and maintaining Drupal Commerce platforms

Kelowna, BC | 2016-2018

Team Lead

Promoted from intern developer to team lead within one year, taking responsibility for a business-critical support and maintenance team serving high-priority ecommerce clients.
Led production incident response for client sites where uptime, checkout stability, and rapid diagnosis directly affected revenue and customer trust.
Created team operating procedures, onboarding documentation, and support workflows from scratch, improving consistency across urgent maintenance and SLA-driven work.
Managed Ansible-based DevOps orchestration for the company’s self-hosted infrastructure across dozens of sites and shared development environments.
Repaired a client database containing millions of corrupted records, then wrote automated tests and scripts to prevent recurrence.
Rebuilt and maintained critical ecommerce checkout flows, profiled production bottlenecks, and delivered performance improvements of 50%+ on selected client sites.
Contributed to Drupal Commerce core and related open-source commerce modules, with public contribution history at drupal.org/u/mbreden and verified commits at github.com/drupalcommerce/commerce/commits/8.x-2.x/?author=MattBred