Desmond Brown
I build the systems that products stand on.
I'm Desmond. I build Quodra and I founded Kavana Labs, after seven years shipping APIs, data pipelines, native tooling and mobile apps as a backend engineer and team lead. Python, Rust and TypeScript, from the data model to the release.
See selected work ↓Resume, PDFGitHubLinkedInX
- 7+
- years shipping
- 2,432
- decks made on Quodra
- 30+
- releases a year, led
- 2.9k
- GitHub contributions, past year
Status
- now
- Quodra, founder and engineering lead
- last
- AlgoGroup / Rosetta IMS, procurement systems
- before
- Talent Co-Op, led a team of ten
- community
- Codetopia Community, director of projects & open source
- stack
- Python, Rust, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, SQLite
- ships
- APIs, data pipelines, native tools, mobile apps
- open to
- relocation, remote, hard problems
Products I've built, not just touched.
A founder's product, a systems platform in Rust, a laboratory ERP and two mobile apps for a distributed team. Each one is a case study with the decisions written down.
1.1Quodra
Founder · interactive technical presentations
A presentation platform where equations, charts, circuits and Python cells are live, editable objects rather than images, and where people and AI assistants edit the same document model. Case study →
1.2Veyra
Systems observability for macOS
A Rust platform with a persistent filesystem index, explainable storage findings, resource monitoring and a cleanup engine that never deletes anything without a reviewable, reversible plan. Case study →
1.3GRADIA lab platform
Laboratory ERP and diamond grading
The ERP, grading tools and imaging pipelines used every day by scientists on a platform grading 500+ stones a month, with grading reports minted as verifiable NFTs. Case study →
1.4FoundFast & ManyRoads
Two mobile products, iOS and Android
Startup-idea competitions with community voting, and GPS-guided journeys with location checkpoints: backends, APIs and release engineering for a distributed team of ten. Case study →
1.5Rosetta IMS
Procurement & inventory for AlgoGroup
Typed procurement, inventory and catalogue services that unify Shopify, retailer, supplier and spreadsheet data, with validators that catch cost and margin anomalies before they go live. Case study →
1.6Strain
Materials testing analysis
Turns raw Universal Testing Machine exports into stress–strain analyses with automatic column detection, unit handling and publication-quality plots. Case study →
The rest of the shelf.
An organisation, a course, a CTO seat, client work and the tools I make for myself.
- 2025 – presentKavana LabsFounder
An engineering organisation in Ghana with two arms: a non-profit engineering-education programme, and a products arm behind the automation studio Netivr. - 2026KES 001 · Computational Foundations with PythonCourse author
An eight-week course I wrote for Kavana Labs' education arm: decks, handouts and exercises from “Hello, Machine” to validation, testing and sanity checks. - 2021 – 2026SocialPosts.aiCTO, part-time
AI-assisted social-media publishing: scheduling, content generation and NLP chatbots. Backend, APIs, deployment and ML integrations for four years. - 2021 – 2022Pitch Deck Services portalLead developer
Customer portal for a US pitch-deck agency: orders, payments, questionnaires, deck-progress collaboration and transactional email. Django, React, Postgres, Redis. - 2024GitTestProTalent Co-Op
A platform that assesses Git and GitHub skills by guiding people through practical, checked tasks. - 2023VinuageFrontend contributor
A wine-trading platform with virtual cellars and a wallet: React frontend for buying, storing and reselling wine. - 2025Africa AtlasSide project
An interactive 3D atlas of 54 African economies built on World Bank data, from consumer to producer. - 2025FundGrepCLI
Command-line search across scholarships, grants and funding opportunities. - 2025MGEC++20
A mathematical and geometry engine for simulation and future CAD modelling, written to understand how CAD kernels work. - 2026SelahSide project
A calm, cinematic, scroll-based journey through the whole Bible in fifteen acts, built with three.js and no backend.
Seven years, end to end.
From a junior developer wiring SMS verification to leading a team and founding a product. The full record is on the resume page.
2.1Quodra — Founder & CEO · Product & Engineering
The presentation editor where science actually runs: equations, Python cells, charts, circuits and molecules are live objects rather than images. Grew out of Praxis, a prototype I built in late 2025.
- Designed the structured document model, editor architecture and backend services so people and AI systems manipulate the same objects directly, keeping AI-generated content editable instead of flattened.
- Shipped PowerPoint import and export, and an MCP interface through which AI assistants create and modify presentation objects programmatically.
- Migrated backend workloads to Google Cloud Run. 300 users and 2,432 decks created to date.
2.2AlgoGroup / Rosetta IMS — Software Engineer, Procurement & Inventory
Procurement, inventory and catalogue services that unify Shopify, retailer, supplier and spreadsheet data into one typed model.
- Modelled 4,000+ SKUs across roughly 60 suppliers with typed ingestion and validation pipelines for pricing, packaging units, bulk-buy terms, landed cost and margin.
- Backed the pipelines with 183 automated tests; validators flag inconsistent costs and margin anomalies before they reach the live catalogue.
- Added provenance and audit trails so every catalogue change is traceable, reviewable and reproducible.
2.3Talent Co-Op — Team Lead Software Developer
Led a distributed team of about ten engineers while building Python backends and APIs hands-on for production web and mobile apps.
- Owned architecture reviews, testing strategy, releases and sprint execution; shipped 30+ releases a year.
- Shipped FoundFast (iOS and Android): startup-idea submission, community voting and competitions, 3,000+ downloads.
- Shipped ManyRoads (iOS and Android): GPS-guided journeys with location-based checkpoints and user-created routes.
- Introduced automated testing and CI/CD with Pytest, GitHub Actions and CircleCI; mentored engineers in design, debugging and TDD.
2.4GRADIA — Full Stack Engineer
The laboratory ERP and grading tools used daily by scientists and grading staff on a platform grading 500+ diamonds a month.
- Built lab records, diamond grading, report generation and workflow automation used every day by the grading team.
- Cut per-stone imaging time from about 3 minutes to about 45 seconds by automating detection and cropping of macro and nano diamond imagery.
- Built the customer-facing verification app and the Solidity contracts that mint each grading report as an NFT; 70+ reports issued on-chain.
2.6BeNeverEnding Inc. — Backend Developer
REST APIs, authentication workflows and backend services for a character-building and visual-storytelling platform.
2.7mPedigree — Junior Developer
Authentication and SMS-verification workflows for secure user onboarding.
Opinions, earned.
3.1Nothing destructive without a plan
Veyra's cleanup engine will not move a file until there is an immutable plan, a typed approval and a way back. I build backends the same way: audit trails, provenance, reversibility.
3.2Typed models over loose data
Four thousand SKUs from spreadsheets, Shopify and suppliers became one typed model with validators at the door. Structure first, then speed.
3.3Ship, measure, mentor
Thirty-plus releases a year with a team of ten only works with tests, CI and people who understand why the system is shaped the way it is.
Notes from the build.
- 2025 · 10Introduction to Data Science — A Beginner’s Guide for the CuriousMedium
Have you ever wondered how Netflix knows what movie you’ll want to watch next, or how businesses predict customer trends before they even happen? That’s the magic of Data Scienc… - 2025 · 06From Lines to Predictions: An Intuitive Introduction to Linear Regression in Machine LearningMedium
What started as a simple assignment in my Analytic Geometry and Calculus with Python class turned into a fascinating exploration of how mathematics translates into real-world pr… - 2023 · 05Breaking into the Open Source Community: A Beginner’s GuideMedium
If you’re reading this, you’re likely a budding developer keen to jump into the vast universe of open source software. But where do you start? Navigating this landscape can be d… - 2020 · 03Setting Up Your Windows Machine For Web DevelopmentMedium
One of the most important and necessary things to do as a developer is setting up your machine. Though this might seem easy especially on Operating Systems such as MacOs and Lin…
Let's build something durable.
I'm open to relocation and remote roles, and always happy to talk about backend architecture, native tooling, or the products I'm building.
- browndesmond30@yahoo.com
- GitHub
- kali-physi-hacker
- desmond-brown
- X
- @Desmond956
- Résumé
- resume page, or the PDF
- Community
- Codetopia Community, where I direct projects and open source
Colophon
Set in Literata and IBM Plex Mono. Built with Next.js; no analytics, no cookies. The figures are drawn from data kept in the site's repository; Fig. 2 is the only screenshot. Last revised 27 September 2026.