Adam Hess
Staff Software Engineer at GitHub
Seattle, Washington, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolAdam Hess is a Staff Software Engineer based in Seattle with 12 years of experience building reliable back-end systems and improving developer tooling. He has progressed through senior engineering roles at GitHub and Procore, bringing deep expertise in Ruby and Rails and hands-on performance work inside the Ruby language itself (including YJIT and core parser improvements). Adam is an active open-source contributor who has enhanced Rails parameter handling, template rendering, and the Prism Ruby parser, demonstrating both framework-level intuition and compiler-level performance tuning. He pairs product-focused engineering with a history of shipping creative prototypes and hackathon-winning projects, reflecting a maker’s drive beyond day-to-day work. With a dual background in computer science and psychology, he brings user-centered thinking to complex system design.
12 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science (BS), Computer Science & Psychology, Bachelor of Science (BS), Computer Science & Psychology at Westmont CollegeAssociate of Arts (AA), Psychology, Associate of Arts (AA), Psychology at Marymount College
Stackoverflow
1,587reputation
177kreached
14answers
3questions
Github Skills (37)
application-framework10
parserator10
rss10
ruby-rails10
parser10
abstract-syntax-tree10
testing10
app-framework10
parse-tree10
mvc10
rails10
object-oriented-programming10
ruby10
actionpack10
parsing10
Programming languages (16)
Github contributions (5)
feedjira/feedjira
Nov 2016 - Jan 2023
A feed parsing library
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:38 commits, 83 PRs, 74 pushes in 6 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Adam primarily contributed to the testing and improvement of the feed parsing library. This involved modifying existing test specifications, particularly focusing on preprocessing and instance methods within the `FeedUtilities` class. Their commits also include changes related to updating feed attributes and entry handling, indicating a focus on core library functionalities. Furthermore, the user's work includes adding support for Podlove chapters, expanding the capabilities of the library.
parsingparserrss-parserfeed-parsingrss
ruby/ruby
Jan 2021 - Feb 2024
The Ruby Programming Language
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Performance Engineer
Back-end Developer & Performance EngineerContributions:19 reviews, 30 PRs, 48 comments in 3 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Adam contributed to the Ruby programming language repository, focusing on performance improvements and core language features. Their work involved adding YJIT codegen for `objtostring` and addressing performance bottlenecks in the compiler. They also fixed typos and other minor issues in the YJIT code. Furthermore, the user contributed to the OStruct and Module/Class implementation.
programming-languagerubycobject-orientedruby-language
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