Matthew Weiss

Matthew Weiss, 37, a resident of Staten Island, passed away peacefully at Sloan Kettering Memorial Hospital Manhattan in the presence of family on November 24, 2020 after a 2 year battle with cancer. Born and raised on Staten Island, he was the beloved son of Steven (Fritz) Weiss and Kathleen Gentile Weiss. He was preceded in death by his Grandparents Thomas and Rose Mammana, Margaret and Charles Weiss, Josephine and Andrew Gentile, and Aunts Barbara Mammana and Rosemary Tanacredi.

Matt’s passions in life were his friends, of which there were many, his family, Troop 21, technology, cooking and music. He played numerous instruments including the saxophone, tuba, piano, harmonica and guitar. He loved sharing his compositions as well as his knowledge of music and the music of new musical groups he encountered. While he loved his job, the Austin lifestyle and music scene, he hated missing out on the personal interactions with all his friends and family.

At the time of his death, Matt was Senior Director of Software Engineering for BigCommerce, an ecommerce company based in Austin, Texas where he had excitedly relocated to in 2017. There he was responsible for building engineering teams which among other achievements, collaborated and successfully launched BC’s first mobile apps. In November 2020 his teams were in the final phases leading up to a launch of a new engineering program for which he had been the main impetus. To Matt there were no problems, only solutions. This was a project of which he was most proud in part because of the dedication and drive of his teams while all were forced to collaborate remotely.

From 2012 to 2017 Matt held the positions of Team Lead and eventually Director of Engineering at Borderfree/ Fifty One in Manhattan. There he received numerous CEO Excellence awards most notably for the design,development and implementation of their “PERSEUS” program. He had an innate talent for translating technospeak into English. During his time at Borderfree he was also happily responsible for coordinating their many social events to foster the development of personal relationships both in and outside the office setting.

Matt started his programming career at the recommendation and tutelage of one of his best friends, Joe Harouni. Matt, a Music/ Business major from New York University, and Joe, a Computer Science major from Washington and Lee co-founded RNS Interactive a web services design and development company in 2008. This led to Matt being offered a position as Team Leader later that year at Celerant Technology in Richmond Valley Staten Island.

In addition to his parents, Matt is survived by his Aunts Marion Mammana, Carol Golterman, and Barbara Weiss; Uncles Dennis Weiss, Joe Tanacredi, Rob Golterman, and John Lowenthal; Cousins Michael and Monica Lowenthal, Jessica Lowenthal and Kevin Pari, Elizabeth and Mike Brunetti, Jennifer Golterman, Michelle Weiss, Danielle and Chris Rice,Brooke Tanacredi and Justin Tanacredi; his other mothers Mary Harouni and Fran DiGiorgio and hundreds of friends and colleagues.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you would please consider donating to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Melanoma Research Fund.

The final song he wanted to leave for all is from Monty Python's Life of Brian “Look on the Bright Side of Life.”

Family and Friends may visit Monday 11/30 from 2-4 & 7-9.