Alex Waygood
Software Engineer at Sky News
Stevenage, England, United Kingdom
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolAlex Waygood is a software engineer focused on building Python developer tooling in Rust, currently contributing to OpenAI after two years at Astral. A CPython core contributor and maintainer across projects like ruff, typeshed and typing_extensions, he brings deep practical knowledge of Python typing and static analysis—evidenced by documentation and test improvements to mypy and CPython. His background combines five years of engineering with unusual experience in journalism and large-scale charity fundraising, giving him strong communication skills and a knack for making complex technical topics accessible. Based in Stevenage, he balances open-source stewardship with fast-paced product work and a proven eye for clear, accurate technical documentation.
5 years of coding experience
6 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts (BA), Music, Bachelor of Arts (BA), Music at University of OxfordAs a Senior Prefect, I assisted on weekends and after school where school events such as open days are happening. My specific role included publicity for school and charity events.
As well as this, I was involved with a large number of extra-curricular societies, many of which I took an active lead in running and organising. In the Sixth Form, I took over running the Philosophy Society after many years of attending sessions (despite not taking Philosophy A Level), and also took over running the Debating Society that was jointly run with Watford Grammar School for Girls., As a Senior Prefect, I assisted on weekends and after school where school events such as open days are happening. My specific role included publicity for school and charity events.
As well as this, I was involved with a large number of extra-curricular societies, many of which I took an active lead in running and organising. In the Sixth Form, I took over running the Philosophy Society after many years of attending sessions (despite not taking Philosophy A Level), and also took over running the Debating Society that was jointly run with Watford Grammar School for Girls. at Watford Grammar School for BoysMaster of Arts - MA, Journalism, Master of Arts - MA, Journalism at City St George’s, University of London
English, French, German
Stackoverflow
6,913reputation
257kreached
132answers
4questions
python
top-1%
visual-studio-code
top-5%
Github Skills (25)
unit-testing10
static-typing10
typesc10
static-analysis10
python10
mypy10
dynamic-typing10
typescript10
python-typing10
implicit-typing10
typechecker10
type-system10
typehinting10
type-annotations10
optional-typing10
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
python/typeshed
Nov 2021 - Jan 2023
Collection of library stubs for Python, with static types
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:3846 reviews, 741 commits, 3467 PRs in 1 year 2 months
Contributions summary:Alex contributed to the typeshed project by providing and improving stubs for various Python packages. Their work focused on refining type annotations for classes, methods, and parameters, using PEP 604 syntax for union types where appropriate. They primarily worked on improving the accuracy of the stubs for different packages, ensuring that they would provide accurate type hints for use in static analysis.
pythonstub
python/cpython
Oct 2021 - Jan 2023
The Python programming language
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Test Automation Engineer
Back-end Developer & Test Automation EngineerContributions:3337 reviews, 12 commits, 1272 PRs in 1 year 2 months
Contributions summary:Alex contributed extensively to the Python core language repository, focusing on improvements to the typing system. They implemented tests for `functools.singledispatchmethod` and addressed bugs related to its interaction with class methods and static methods. They also added tests and documentation improvements to the typing module, specifically addressing issues around PEPs, generic types, and the use of type hints. In addition, they contributed to the doctest module to fix a bug.
programming-languagepython
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