Forrest Brazeal is co-founder and president of Freeman & Forrest, the technical marketing company he founded with Emily Freeman after leading developer media at Google Cloud. A cloud architect, educator, cartoonist, songwriter, and novelist, he created the Cloud Resume Challenge, which helped thousands of aspiring engineers develop practical skills and enter technology careers.
From cloud architecture to creator-led media
Brazeal earned a master’s degree in computer science from Georgia Tech and worked at Infor, Trek10, and A Cloud Guru before joining Google Cloud. As a senior cloud architect at Trek10, he hosted the serverless podcast Think FaaS, wrote about event-driven serverless architectures, became an early AWS Serverless Hero, and twice co-chaired ServerlessConf.
In April 2020, he launched the Cloud Resume Challenge, asking aspiring engineers to build and deploy a résumé website using cloud hosting, HTTPS, DNS, application code, version control, and infrastructure automation. Participants learned by assembling real systems and documenting their decisions, producing evidence of engineering ability more persuasive than credentials alone.
As Google Cloud’s Head of Developer Media, Brazeal continued advocating practical pathways into cloud careers for people coming from help-desk work, traditional IT, and nontechnical backgrounds. He left Google in 2024 and founded Freeman & Forrest with Freeman, its chief executive. Their company connects technology businesses with independent technical creators across cloud computing, security, and generative AI. He later transferred the Cloud Resume Challenge to ExamPro to focus on the business.
Distinctive ideas and creative work
Production-shaped learning: Brazeal designs educational projects around unfamiliar tools, interconnected services, and independent problem-solving, giving career changers tangible work to show employers.
Test-driven legacy modernization: At AI Engineer World’s Fair 2025, Brazeal and Augment Code solutions architect Matt Ball used Apollo Guidance Computer source code to demonstrate AI-assisted investigation of the 1202 scheduler alarm and implementation of a Python simulation of the P65 automatic landing routine. Brazeal recommended understanding existing behavior, writing tests, and modernizing small components incrementally; he also warned that agents can misinterpret basic implementation details. He participated as an independent collaborator, not an Augment employee.
Technical storytelling beyond conventional formats: His illustrated 2020 book The Read Aloud Cloud introduced cloud computing to general readers, and his ransomware-themed songwriting received a Pwnie Award in 2021. His science-fiction novel Paradox Inc., scheduled for January 2027, satirizes the race to commercialize time travel.
