Adam Thomas
Principal Software Development Engineer at Amazon Web Services
Seattle, Washington, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolAdam Thomas is a Principal Software Development Engineer in Seattle with 14 years of experience building backend systems and developer tooling, currently focused at AWS. A former Java developer who has grown into a cloud-native engineering leader, he has deep expertise in code generation, protocol modeling, and API design—evidenced by substantial contributions to high-profile open-source projects like Smithy and the AWS SDKs for Java and JavaScript. At AWS he has worked on CloudFormation and complex SDK generation issues, improving correctness for features such as event streams and strict protocol parsing. Collected practical experience from early work on Java-based CMS platforms and MySQL recovery rounds out his systems-first approach. Unusually for someone in his role, his academic background is in rhetoric, which informs clear technical documentation and spec-writing that complements his engineering craft.
14 years of coding experience
4 years of employment as a software developer
BA Rhetoric, BA Rhetoric at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Github Skills (19)
json10
javascript10
software-design10
typescript10
java10
aws-sdk10
javas10
code-generation10
typescript-types10
rest-api10
typescripts10
event-stream10
smithy10
api-design9
amazon9
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
smithy-lang/smithy
Apr 2021 - Nov 2022
Smithy is a protocol-agnostic interface definition language and set of tools for generating clients, servers, and documentation for any programming language.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:90 reviews, 50 commits, 77 PRs in 1 year 6 months
Contributions summary:Adam primarily contributes to the Smithy modeling language and related tooling. Their work includes enhancements to the core language specification, such as documenting trait precedence, defining validation models, and adding tests for protocol compliance. They also contribute tests and model definitions for various HTTP protocols, showcasing their deep understanding of the language's application in API design.
smithyagnosticsmithy-modelsprogramming-languageclients
aws/aws-sdk-js-v3
Jun 2021 - Feb 2022
Modularized AWS SDK for JavaScript.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:55 reviews, 21 commits, 27 PRs in 7 months
Contributions summary:Adam primarily contributed to the AWS SDK for JavaScript (v3) repository, focusing on code generation and protocol tests. They implemented features related to strict parsing of request and response bodies, including support for strict timestamp and union parsing. Their work also involved updating the code generation process to support Smithy 1.10, 1.12.0, and 1.16.3, including modifications to address changes in AWS JSON protocol specifications, and adjusting server protocol tests.
aws-sdk-jsjavascriptaws-sdkmodularizedsdk
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