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Joel Messer,Principal Engineer

Hi, I’m Joel.

I’ve been writing software professionally for 17 years, mostly data platforms, developer tooling, and the React apps people use on top of them. I like taking things from an empty repo to production, and I like it even more when they stay up.

jobs@messer.dev

Work I’m proud of

2026

A data platform you can talk to

I built a ClickHouse platform for high-volume event data and got it from first commit to production in about six months. Then I put an MCP server in front of it, so people can dig through the data with an AI agent, and row-level security still applies to every query the agent makes.

  • Helm charts, GitOps, and Grafana as code across four environments.
  • A compliance service that turns purge directives into batched, idempotent deletes.

Built with ClickHouse, MCP, Python, FastAPI, Kafka, Kubernetes

2021–2026

40+ data tools that run in the browser

I’m the principal developer on a family of small React apps that open big data files entirely in the browser, with nothing uploaded to a server. The most popular one had more than 5,000 users last year.

  • Web Worker ingest that parses files of several hundred megabytes without freezing the page.
  • The shared component library and scaffolding CLI every tool starts from.

Built with React, TypeScript, Web Workers

2024–2025

Replacing a ten-year-old backend

I led the rewrite. It now runs on 70+ servers, filters millions of events a day, and 1,200+ people use it.

  • A legacy-compatible API so other teams could migrate when they were ready.
  • Resumable migrations for multi-million-row tables that keep memory flat.

Built with Django, Celery, PostgreSQL, Redis, React

Experience

Senior Principal Software Engineer, Visionist

2013–present

  • Data Platform Lead2026–present
  • Principal Developer, in-browser data tools2021–2026
  • Collaboration Platform Lead (concurrent)2024–2025
  • Shared CI templates for ~60 projects (concurrent)2020–present
  • React UI Team Lead2018–2020
  • Full-Stack Developer, React and Java2013–2018

Software Engineer, Exelis

2009–2013

B.S. Computer Science, University of Delaware

After hours

The Flyers button

My desk has a row of Loupedeck buttons that are just URLs. A Cloudflare Worker behind them checks which Philly team is playing right now and opens the right streaming app. One button covers the Flyers, Eagles, Phillies, Sixers, and Union, and falls back to the UFC card when nobody’s on.

Joel in a Flyers hoodie in the car, with his dog on a Flyers leash in the passenger seat.

The homelab

A couple dozen self-hosted services in Docker Compose (photos, media, documents, home automation, monitoring, and a Minecraft server), all behind one reverse proxy and single sign-on.

New stacks

Side projects are how I try tools I don’t get to use at work. Lately that’s been a React Native app on Expo backed by Hono and PostgreSQL, a multi-tenant Next.js app on Cloudflare Workers, and a no-signup app that runs on a single Worker with KV and R2.

Tools I reach for

Languages
TypeScript, Python, Java, Go, SQL
Front end
React, Vite, Web Workers, Leaflet
Back end
Django, FastAPI, Celery, Kafka, Redis
Data
ClickHouse, PostgreSQL, MongoDB
Infrastructure
Kubernetes, Helm, GitLab CI, Docker, Ansible
AI
MCP servers, agent skills, multi-agent workflows

Say hi

Email is the best way to reach me.

jobs@messer.dev