Jamie O'Brien

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Pro surfer documenting Pipeline sessions and surf adventures (1.35M subs).

1.4MYouTube followers

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About Jamie O'Brien

Pro surfer documenting Pipeline sessions and surf adventures (1.35M subs).

Long before the vlogs, Jamie O’Brien was one of the most gifted competitive surfers of his generation. Raised in a beachfront house staring straight at the Banzai Pipeline, he won the 2004 Rip Curl Pipeline Masters at just 21 — beating Sonny Garcia, Kalani Robb, and Bruce Irons in the final — joining the shortest list in surfing as one of the youngest Pipe Masters champions ever. He added the Hansen’s Pipeline Pro (2003), the Rip Curl Invitational (2009), and the inaugural Volcom Pipe Pro (2010), and took Surfer Magazine’s Breakthrough Performer of the Year award in 2005.

Then he did something almost no champion does: he walked away from the contest grind and became surfing’s first true YouTube star. The nine-season “Who is JOB” series was self-effacing, absurdist, and unlike anything in surf media — a world-class talent who’d rather make you laugh than impress you. Riding foam soft-tops at giant Pipeline, pulling outrageous stunts, and famously bringing pyrotechnics to Teahupo’o, O’Brien proved the best career in surfing is the one you design yourself. He still charges Pipe in his forties and runs the Jamie O’Brien Surf Experience school on the North Shore.

What endures is the blueprint: a champion who refused to let the contest jersey define him, and instead built a second career as surfing’s most beloved entertainer — part athlete, part comedian, part documentarian of the North Shore life. In a sport that often takes itself very seriously, JOB’s lasting contribution might be permission: to compete ferociously and laugh constantly, sometimes in the same session.

About this creator

Words by Julian Cole

Jamie O’Brien — JOB — is surfing’s great showman: the Pipeline master whose YouTube channel turned professional surfing into the internet’s most entertaining reality show. One of the youngest winners of the Pipe Masters ever, he walked away from the contest grind to become something rarer: a surfer who makes millions laugh. Soft-top boards at giant Pipeline, pyrotechnics at Teahupo’o, and the “Who is JOB” series — nine seasons of self-effacing, absurdist genius — made him the king of the surf vlog. Four decades into a life spent at the world’s deadliest wave, he’s still charging, still playing, still documenting it all.

Born James Duncan York O’Brien on June 9, 1983, in Kahuku, Hawaii, Jamie grew up in a beachfront house on Oahu’s North Shore with a view of the Banzai Pipeline — the most famous and feared wave on the planet. His father, Australian Mick O’Brien, was a lifeguard; Jamie has said that talking story with the regular surfers on his dad’s beach is what pulled him into the water. He was surfing by age three and competing in local contests by six.

The competitive résumé is elite: fourth at the Pipeline Masters in 2001, victory at the 2003 Hansen’s Pipeline Pro, and then, at just 21, the 2004 Rip Curl Pipeline Masters — beating Sonny Garcia, Kalani Robb, and Bruce Irons in the final — making him one of the youngest Pipe Masters champions in history. He added the 2009 Rip Curl Invitational and the inaugural 2010 Volcom Pipe Pro, and in 2005 Surfer Magazine named him its Boost Breakthrough Performer of the Year.

But JOB never fit the contest machine. In the 2000s he revealed his defiant streak in a Red Bull-sponsored video, burning an ASP rulebook on camera — a declaration of independence that defined the rest of his career. He took his career into his own hands, producing the surf films Freakshow and Freakside, appearing in Step Into Liquid and Blue Crush, and becoming his own brand before “personal brand” was a phrase.

The web series “Who is JOB” — nine seasons, ending with its final episode in October 2019 — was the breakthrough. Self-effacing, absurdist, and refreshingly unserious, it showed a side of pro surfing nobody had seen: a world-class talent who’d rather make you laugh than impress you. The clips shot into the millions of views, and O’Brien became surfing’s first true YouTube star — riding foam soft-top boards at massive Pipeline, pulling wild stunts, and most famously bringing pyrotechnics to Teahupo’o in Tahiti.

Behind the comedy is a waterman of rare caliber. In 2016 he paddled out on a foam board to help rescue a drowning bodyboarder, assisting Guilherme Tamega in bringing the victim to shore — the kind of courage that doesn’t make the vlogs but defines the man. He runs the Jamie O’Brien Surf Experience, his North Shore surf school, and his signature Catch Surf Beater boards brought soft-top fun to a generation of groms.

Now in his forties and living just down the beach from the house he grew up in, O’Brien is still charging Pipeline, still inventing, still filming — “staying relevant,” as he puts it, on his own terms. The king of Pipeline and the king of the surf vlog, in one person: an entrepreneur far more calculated than the comedy suggests, and proof that the best career in surfing is the one you design yourself.