# Yevgeniy Brikman

> Yevgeniy 'Jim' Brikman is the co-founder of Gruntwork and one of the most influential voices in infrastructure-as-code. Author of three O'Reilly books — 'Terraform: Up & Running' (now in its 3rd edition), 'Hello, Startup', and 'Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery' (2025) — he has spent 15+ years building infrastructure that served hundreds of millions of users at LinkedIn, TripAdvisor, Cisco Systems, and Thomson Financial. At Gruntwork, he helped pioneer the idea of treating infrastructure like software: testable, reusable, and versioned.

- **Role:** Co-Founder at Gruntwork
- **Organizations:** Gruntwork, O'Reilly Media, Atomic Squirrel
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Master of Engineering in Computer Science, Cornell University, BS in Computer Science, Cornell University, High School Diploma, Marblehead High School
- **Known for:** Co-founded Gruntwork, which has helped hundreds of companies adopt infrastructure-as-code best practices, Authored 'Terraform: Up & Running', the definitive guide to Terraform (now in its 3rd edition, published by O'Reilly), Authored 'Hello, Startup', a comprehensive guide for engineers entering entrepreneurship

## Career timeline

- **2002** — Started CS at Cornell University; worked as Student Webmaster and CS Teaching Assistant
- **2005** — Joined Thomson Financial as software engineer
- **2007** — Joined Cisco Systems as software engineer
- **2010** — Joined TripAdvisor as software engineer
- **2011** — Joined LinkedIn as software engineer; witnessed company's DevOps transformation from bi-weekly deployments to hundreds per day
- **2015** — Founded Atomic Squirrel, a startup consulting company; published 'Hello, Startup' with O'Reilly
- **2016** — Merged Atomic Squirrel with Josh Padnick's Phoenix DevOps to co-found Gruntwork
- **2017** — Published first edition of 'Terraform: Up & Running'
- **2019** — Published second edition of 'Terraform: Up & Running'; gave 'Lessons from 300k+ Lines of Infrastructure Code' at QCon London
- **2022** — Published third edition of 'Terraform: Up & Running'; wrote 'The Future of Terraform Must Be Open' on Medium
- **2025** — Published 'Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery' with O'Reilly (June 2025)

## Achievements

- Co-founded Gruntwork, which has helped hundreds of companies adopt infrastructure-as-code best practices
- Authored 'Terraform: Up & Running', the definitive guide to Terraform (now in its 3rd edition, published by O'Reilly)
- Authored 'Hello, Startup', a comprehensive guide for engineers entering entrepreneurship
- Authored 'Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery' (2025), a hands-on guide to modern software delivery
- Co-created Terragrunt (9,500+ GitHub stars) — the most popular Terraform/OpenTofu orchestration tool
- Co-created Terratest (7,900+ GitHub stars) — the leading Go library for infrastructure testing
- Built infrastructure at LinkedIn, TripAdvisor, Cisco Systems, and Thomson Financial serving hundreds of millions of users
- 12,400+ Medium followers; prolific technical writer on DevOps, IaC, and startups
- Speaker at HashiConf, QCon London, QCon San Francisco, MIT, and dozens of other conferences

## Latest updates

- **2025-10** — Appeared on GOTO Book Club with Kief Morris to discuss 'Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery'
- **2025-06** — Published 'Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery' with O'Reilly Media
- **2025-02** — Appeared on The Tech Lead Journal podcast (#206) discussing the future of DevOps and software delivery
- **2024-07** — Announced early release of 'Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery' on Medium
- **2024-03** — Published Gruntwork Newsletter covering new Terragrunt features including graph, structured logging, and telemetry

## Links

- Website: https://www.ybrikman.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbrikman
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brikis98
- GitHub: https://github.com/brikis98
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brikis98

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/yevgeniy-brikman
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-04-17