Chris Pitzer
Head of Engineering / Technical Co-Founder
Engineering leader building serverless platforms and embedded systems. Previously Principal Embedded Engineer at GlowFlock and Senior Frontend Engineer at Airship.
Hi, my name is
About
I’m a software engineer with experience across full-stack web development and embedded systems. As a technical co-founder at CollabCampfire and GlowFlock, I’ve led teams building everything from serverless collaboration platforms to distributed wireless lighting systems.
I enjoy solving complex problems at the intersection of hardware and software, and I’m passionate about building reliable, scalable systems.
Here are a few technologies I've been working with recently:- Python
- C++
- JavaScript
- TypeScript
- Django
- React
- FreeRTOS
- AWS
- ESP32
- Docker
Experience
Head of Engineering / Technical Co-Founder
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CollabCampfire
April 2024 - Nov 2025
Led architecture, infrastructure, and product development for a serverless collaboration platform built on Django, HTMX, Zappa, and AWS. Managed a two-engineer team, defined technical standards, set up CI/CD, and refined the roadmap through user interviews and analytics. Engineered the backend, data model, and AWS stack, delivering a ~90% improvement in initial page load performance and a scalable production environment. Using AI-assisted development, Docker workflows, GitHub Actions, and custom scripts, I automated 100% of deployments and increased team delivery speed by ~3×.
Principal Embedded Engineer / Technical Co-Founder
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GlowFlock
Oct 2021 - April 2024
Designed and delivered a distributed wireless lighting platform powered by a custom mesh protocol implemented on ESP32/ESP-NOW, supporting encrypted multi-hop messaging, large-scale time synchronization, and backward-compatible protocol updates. Built a C++/FreeRTOS firmware OS (~30k LOC) providing Bluetooth provisioning, Wi-Fi/mesh OTA updates, optimizing CMake build, and real-time animation timing and control. Collaborated in KiCad on 14 PCB revisions, created pogo-pin flashing and test fixtures, and oversaw QA and commercial manufacturing. System operated reliably across 250+ nodes over ~1 mile, validating its architecture under demanding real-world conditions.
Senior Frontend Engineer
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Airship Inc
June 2016 - Aug 2021
Developed core features for the company’s mobile wallet and messaging platforms, contributing across frontend React/TypeScript/Redux systems and backend Django REST APIs. Built customer-facing, browser-based message composers for notifications, loyalty cards, boarding passes, and coupons, integrating with Apple and Google Wallet APIs to support personalized passes at airline scale. Working from UX designs, I implemented complex, high-fidelity React interfaces that powered millions of secure wallet and push messages. Wrote unit and integration tests and supported production systems through on-call rotations in a high-availability environment.
Education
2001 - 2006
B.S. in Business Administration & Digital Media
Greenville University
Graduated With Honors