Justin Chadwell

https://jedevc.com
[email protected]
Birmingham
UK
Building next-gen dev tooling to ship fast and right ⚒️

Work

Dagger Software Engineer Sep 2023Present
  • Worked in the core team to deliver major new Dagger engine features and performance improvements, providing subject-matter expertise for better native Git support, improved caching, and integrations with docker/containerd, with over 700 authored + 1000 reviewed pull-requests touching almost every codebase component.
  • Defined and led the release process and cadence for each fortnightly release (personally cutting over 20), establishing standards for milestones, communication, and backwards-compatibility guarantees.
  • Co-led a massive migration to a custom graph evaluator, integrating a legacy DAG-based cache system with a new GraphQL-based cache, improving scalability and maintainability.
  • Improved automation in our own internal CI, with a focus on low-touch releases, bringing release preparation times down from an entire day to half an hour.
  • Handled escalation of feature requests and resolution of complex production issues for high-priority users and customers.
  • Mentored and upskilled junior engineers through structured onboarding, technical guidance, and pair-programming.
  • Assisted with booth duty across three KubeCon US/EU events, pitching, discussing, and demoing Dagger to attendees.
Docker Software Engineer Apr 2022Sep 2023
  • Supported the open-source container ecosystem by developing and maintaining popular open-source projects, Buildx and BuildKit to power the docker build experience.
  • Improved software supply chain security by integrating in-toto attestations and SBOMs into BuildKit.
  • Prototyped and helped launch the Docker Build Cloud service for remote BuildKit-powered compute.
Pexip Software Engineer Sep 2021Mar 2022
  • Maintained internal build systems, CI/CD infrastructure and developer tooling to enable enhanced developer productivity.
  • Designed internal fuzzing and static analysis pipelines to automate bug hunting and increase the visibility of security issues.
  • Investigated complex low-level video codec issues from production environments.
Progressive Access Software Engineer Nov 2019Jan 2022
  • Created and managed frontend, authentication, payment, and mailing microservices for the Live Chemistry SaaS platform.
  • Wrote CI/CD pipelines utilizing Terraform and Docker to automate deployment.
  • Designed and developed a new Jamstack home site and blog to be the public face of the company.
ARM Software Intern Jun 2019Sep 2019
  • Introduced support for next-generation ARM security features in open-source firmware.

Education

Computer Science BSc University of Birmingham Sep 2018Jul 2021
Bachelor of Science with First Class Honours.

Skills

Systems Go C/C++ Rust Linux
Platform Docker Containerd Kubernetes GitHub Actions GitLab CI
Scripting Python Bash Docker
Frontend HTML CSS Javascript React
Security Fuzzing Reverse engineering Static analysis Vulnerability scanning

Interests

Food
I love all things food, whether that’s trying tasting menus travelling around the UK, hosting friends and family, or even just adding to my cookbook collection!
Gaming
I play quite a lot of games, from board and card games with a group of friends, all the way to single-player games on my computer at home (I do love a good roguelike).
Tech
I enjoy tinkering with a number of technical projects at home whenever I have a few spare moments (few and far between though they may be!)