Æva Black is a non-binary, Netherlands-based software engineer and cybersecurity consultant with 17 years of experience spanning backend, frontend, and DevOps for open-source infrastructure and desktop applications. A veteran of the first dot-com bubble and a Y2K survivor, Æva brings institutional memory to modern problems, blending pragmatic engineering with sustainability-focused F/OSS stewardship. Their contributions to high-profile projects like OpenStack (Nova, DevStack) demonstrate backend and deployment expertise in cloud and bare-metal environments, while UI work on Mixxx shows an eye for usability and front-end scaling. Æva excels at bridging operations and development—implementing coding standards, power-state correctness for baremetal drivers, and deployment utilities that improve testability and reproducibility. Known for thoughtful, security-minded solutions, they pair deep systems knowledge with a curious, multidisciplinary academic background that includes computer science, physics, and East Asian religious studies.
17 years of coding experience
N/A, Computer Science, Physics, Religious Studies (East Asian), N/A, Computer Science, Physics, Religious Studies (East Asian) at University of California, Santa Barbara
OpenStack Compute (Nova). Mirror of code maintained at opendev.org.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Contributions:65 commits in 3 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Æva primarily contributed to the OpenStack Compute (Nova) project by implementing and modifying back-end components. Their work involved adding a HACKING check to enforce coding standards, ensuring nodes are off before powering on in the baremetal driver, and importing scheduler components for Ironic. They also addressed a bug related to flavor extra specs and modified the Ironic driver to correctly handle power state changes. The user also contributed to testing and updated the Ironic driver to use the "AVAILABLE" state.
System for quickly installing an OpenStack cloud from upstream git for testing and development. Mirror of code maintained at opendev.org.
Role in this project:
DevOps Engineer
Contributions:6 commits in 2 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Æva's commits primarily focus on enhancing the DevStack environment for the OpenStack project. They added support for the OpenVZ virtualization driver and implemented changes to configure the environment for bare metal deployments. The contributions include modifying configuration files, adding dependencies, and creating utilities to improve deployment and testing processes. The user also addressed issues related to flavor lists and security group configurations.
installingtestinginfrastructureopenshiftupstream
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