A technologist who understands creative.
30 years driving imagination to real-world implementation. Today that space is AI-native, agentic development — where I push the limits daily.
Nathan O'Brien is the founder of Metatoy, an independent product studio, and consults through N8+US as a fractional CTO and AI architect. Before going independent he spent 11 years at BuzzFeed as a Staff engineer — owner of its social-publishing frontend and the engineer who proved its first agentic-AI patterns in production. Before that, a decade of agency leadership: Director of Technology at Schematic on Target.com, growing OLSON's interactive team from 4 to 36, and early web work at Fallon and Martin·Williams — BMWFilms, Bahamas.com — back to 1995. Every era has been the same job, done at the newest seam between design and engineering. Today that seam is AI.
Leadership, proven at scale.
Technical direction and team leadership across major-brand agency delivery, an 11-year Staff-engineer run at BuzzFeed, and now solo studio delivery — applied today as fractional leadership through N8+US.
- Built and led a 36-person blended interactive team at OLSON (12 full-time + 24 contract) delivering across 100+ clients.
- Director of Technology at Schematic — Target.com navigation redesign, delivery coordinated across New York, Los Angeles, and Costa Rica.
- Client pitches and new business, mentoring and performance management, conference speaking on interactive and web technology.
Trusted by teams building for the world's biggest names.
What I take on.
Case studies — a decade of publishing, promotion & sharing platforms.
Start a project.
Tell me what you're building. I'll punch the card and get back to you.
A Bootstrap-5 React + styled-components library. Full-suite parity, published to npm. I build in the open — the same way I'd build with you.