Hi, I’m Wynn.

I build engineering teams and create with code.
Folks call me @pengwynn.

Twenty-five years in, I'm still thankful to make a living doing what I love to do: developing software and building engineering teams. I enjoy the creative process, solving problems, and defining & refining the way we work to ship code to provide value.

Speaking in Moscow
Photo credit: Denis Evgrafov

I'm T-shaped, a generalizing specialist, a Jack-of-all-trades, master of some. I'm driven by curiosity. You don't make it long in this line of work if you're not a lifelong learner. I don't like to work alone. I like being stretched by people with more experience and specialized knowledge as much as I love mentoring and sharing what I've learned. I've gained some experience in:

  • Platform, APIs - I helped build and scale the GitHub API, powering many features of the product and enabling an entire ecosystem to build value upon GitHub.
  • GraphQL - I haven't been this genuinely excited about a technology since the early days of Rails. As a long time REST nerd, I was skeptical about the promise of GraphQL early on, but having been a part of three implementations now, I've come to appreciate the accelerant it can be for frontend teams.
  • React - Returning to the frontend after years of building APIs has been a fun challenge. In the last couple of years, I've learned a ton about how to build a manageable frontend architecture with React.
  • Process - I've written about process because continual improvement is important to me. Success isn't individual, and the way a team works is a function of its mission and its makeup. Process has to be continually shaped and refined.
  • Leadership - As a technologist, as a business owner, and as an engineering manager, I've learned the value of collaboaration, empathy, and leading without authority. I've helped build teams from scratch and scale teams into groups of teams.