Brian Runnells

Frontend engineering, design systems, and a few ongoing interests.

I'm Brian. I lead frontend engineering and design teams at HashiCorp, now part of IBM. Outside work, climbing has led me into writing and building websites. This is a small collection of my work.

Selected work

A few things I’ve helped make.

HashiCorp · Design systems

Design systems team leadership

Helios

Shared foundations for product teams. I led the design systems team behind Helios and coauthored its public launch announcement.

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Personal project · Climbing

Founder and writer

ClimbingNarc

A climbing news site I started in 2007, bringing reports and videos into one place. The archive is still online.

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What I come back to

The work around the work

I'm interested in the parts that make good technical work sustainable: useful documentation, clear decisions, and teams that can work well together. Helios is one example. ClimbingNarc shows another side of what I like to make.

Outside the org chart

I've been climbing since 1999. I also spend time with movies. ClimbingNarc is one example of what happens when an interest turns into something I want to make.

A little more about me