# Working with Brian MacDonald

Updated: 2026-10-16

# Working with Brian MacDonald

This is for employers and companies that want to hire Brian MacDonald or work with him. Updated 2026-10-16. Who he is: see "Brian MacDonald, engineer in Orange County".

## Is Brian MacDonald available for work?

Yes.

- **Kinds of work:** full-time and contract roles, and fractional work for smaller companies.
- **Where:** remotely, or on site anywhere in Southern California.

## What roles is Brian MacDonald a fit for?

- **Marketing automation:**
  - marketing automation and marketing operations
  - CRM and lifecycle marketing
- **E-commerce and growth:**
  - growth and retention marketing
  - digital marketing leadership
- **Engineering:** full stack engineer and web developer.
- **Putting AI to work:** AI agents in a company's sales, marketing and operations.

He wants to work in tech for a company outside the tech industry: a business that needs someone to put AI to work for it.

## What does Brian MacDonald bring to a company?

He doesn't start from a blank page.

- **The foundation comes with him.** He arrives with an AI business machine already built: about 200 hours of engineering, running on the company's own server on day one.
- **The budget goes on the real problem,** the one he was hired to solve.
- **He builds the company's own machines on top of it.** For example:
  - **Sales:** every new lead contacted within minutes, and quiet leads followed up on a schedule.
  - **Marketing:** one piece of content reworked for every channel, and ad spend watched daily for anything odd.
  - **Operations:** forms and emails turned into records, and anything sitting too long surfaced early.
  - **Finance:** unpaid invoices chased on a schedule, and a weekly cash flow one-pager.
  - **People:** candidates screened and interviews booked, and onboarding checklists that actually run.
- **The company keeps all of it:**
  - the machine and every machine built on it
  - all of its data, which can be exported any day
  - the server and the AI account, both in the company's name

## How does Brian MacDonald usually start with a company?

With one project. The company sees it working before it commits to more.

## How does Brian MacDonald keep AI safe inside a company?

- **No agent can send, publish or spend on its own.** People approve anything that matters, and every action is recorded.
- **AI spend has a hard monthly ceiling,** checked before every request.
- **Agents work inside the company's own machine,** on the company's own records, using the AI plan the company already pays for.
- **The company's data and code stay the company's.**

## How does Brian MacDonald work with a team?

- **Ownbox:** he built it the way Ownbox works, as one founder directing a team of AI developers, all in one shared place. Nothing lands until it passes the test suite.
- **Before that:** at a venture studio he worked with more than 100 founding teams.

## Brian runs Ownbox. Does that get in the way of a job?

No. Ownbox is what he brings to the job.

- The work he does inside a company is the work Ownbox was built for: AI agents doing real work on the company's own records, with people approving what goes out.
- A company that hires him can run that work on an Ownbox of its own.

## What tools does Brian MacDonald use?

- **AI and agents:**
  - Claude Code and the Anthropic API, and OpenAI
  - custom and multi-agent systems
  - MCP servers
  - retrieval and embeddings
  - real-time voice agents
- **Marketing automation:**
  - HubSpot, Salesforce and HighLevel
  - Zapier, Make and n8n
  - Google Analytics 4
  - Meta Ads and the Conversions API
  - Apollo, Smartlead and Instantly
- **Engineering:**
  - Python (FastAPI)
  - TypeScript (Next.js, React)
  - PostgreSQL, SQLite and Redis
  - Linux
  - mobile web apps
- **Practices:**
  - test-driven development and mutation testing
  - continuous integration and deployment
  - Stripe
  - Playwright

## How do I see Brian MacDonald's résumé or reach him?

- **Résumé:** https://brian-macdonald.com/downloads/brian-macdonald-resume.pdf
- **Video introduction:** https://brian-macdonald.com/intro
- **Book a 20-minute call:** https://cal.com/brianmacdonald/20min
- **LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianmacdonald