Brennan Duck

LinkedIn | GitHub | Portfolio | Knoxville, TN

Education

Georgia Institute of Technology | M.S. Computer Science | Incoming Fall 2026

• Specialization: Computing Systems (Planned)

Western Governors University | B.S. Computer Science | Graduating May 2026

• Focus: Data Structures, Algorithms, Operating Systems, Computer Architecture, Statistics

Technical Skills

• Systems & Languages: Go (Golang), C, Linux/Unix, Bash, Python, TypeScript, SQL
• Concepts: Distributed Systems, Concurrency, Compilers/Interpreters, Memory Management, TCP/IP
• Tools: Git, Docker, PostgreSQL, LLVM (familiarity), Make

Projects

Redish - Distributed Key-Value Store | Go, TCP, Concurrency | Dec 2025 - Present
A high-performance, sharded key-value store built from scratch to explore distributed consensus and storage engines.

• Architected a custom TCP wire protocol for client-server communication, bypassing HTTP overhead for lower latency.
• Implemented concurrent read/write operations using mutex locking to ensure thread safety under load.
• Designed a Write-Ahead Log (WAL) to ensure data durability and crash recovery (In Progress).
• Status: Core storage engine active; currently implementing replication logic.

Bonobo Language Interpreter | Go, Pratt Parsing, AST | Nov 2025 - Present
A custom interpreted programming language written in Go, featuring C-style syntax and first-class functions.

• Implemented a Pratt Parser (Top-Down Operator Precedence) to handle complex expressions and operator associativity without parser generators.
• Designed a strongly-typed Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) to represent the language's grammatical structure.
• Built a REPL and AST-dumper to visualize parsing logic and tokenization in real-time.
• Status: Parser complete; currently implementing the tree-walk evaluator.

Professional Experience

Duck Family Dental | Digital Systems Lead | 2025 - Current

• Architected and deployed the practice's digital infrastructure, ensuring HIPAA compliance and high availability on self-hosted hardware.
• Engineered automated data pipelines for patient retention, reducing appointment no-shows by ~15% via custom backend services.
• Migrated operations from costly third-party SaaS to internal tools, reducing annual technical overhead by thousands.
• Managed a Dockerized Linux environment, handling DNS, SSL certificate rotation, and CI/CD workflows for zero-downtime updates.

Freelance | Software Developer | May 2024 - Current

• Developed performant web solutions for local businesses, focusing on SEO optimization and lead generation analytics.
• Integrated legacy systems with modern APIs to automate data entry and reporting workflows.

SlopGoblins NPO | Frontend Engineer | March 2024 - May 2024

• Engineered a reusable component library to standardize UI across the platform, improving development velocity.
• Optimized S3 asset delivery strategies to reduce load times for media-heavy pages.