Álvaro Herrera
Esteemed Sr. Principal Engineer, Postgres at EDB
Germany
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolÁvaro Herrera is a distinguished PostgreSQL principal engineer with over 20 years of experience building core database features used by millions of servers worldwide. A long-time committer and major developer for PostgreSQL, he authored critical subsystems such as autovacuum, background workers, BRIN indexes, commit timestamps and shared row locking, and co-authored features like MERGE and DDL-event triggers. Currently an Esteemed Sr. Principal Engineer at EDB and a veteran of 2ndQuadrant, he blends deep systems-level coding with production support and disaster recovery expertise. His contributions to pglogical and the upstream Postgres mirror demonstrate a consistent focus on performance, correctness and robust replication across versions. Known for being able to repair corrupt databases and for leading community efforts (including Spanish-language support), he pairs rare low-level debugging skills with practical operational experience. Based in Germany, he combines academic training from Universidad de Chile with a proven track record of shipping durable, widely deployed database technology.
20 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
Ingeniero Civil en Computación, Ingeniero Civil en Computación at Universidad de Chile
Stackoverflow
2,519reputation
769kreached
32answers
1question
sql
top-5%
postgresql
top-5%
Github Skills (26)
concurrent10
postgresql10
databases10
query-optimization10
c1110
c1710
database-replication10
sql10
relational-databases10
sql-database10
concurrency10
database10
replication8
database-administration8
admin8
Programming languages (10)
Github contributions (5)
postgres/postgres
Sep 2005 - Jan 2023
Mirror of the official PostgreSQL GIT repository. Note that this is just a *mirror* - we don't work with pull requests on github. To contribute, please see https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Submitting_a_Patch
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer / Database Engineer
Back-end Developer / Database EngineerContributions:3242 commits in 17 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Álvaro contributed to the PostgreSQL database codebase by implementing and refining core features. The contributions include fixing concurrency issues, improving query planning and optimizer, and adding support for features like "FETCH FIRST WITH TIES" and SQL/JSON constructors. The user also refactored various code sections, improved error messages, and ensured correct handling of various cases related to foreign keys and table partitioning.
patchgit-repositorypull-requestspostgrespostgresql
2ndQuadrant/pglogical
Mar 2016 - Mar 2020
Logical Replication extension for PostgreSQL 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9.6, 9.5, 9.4 (Postgres), providing much faster replication than Slony, Bucardo or Londiste, as well as cross-version upgrades.
Role in this project:Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:16 commits, 2 pushes, 1 comment in 4 years
Contributions summary:Álvaro primarily contributed to bug fixes and code improvements within the pglogical extension for PostgreSQL. They fixed typos, rewrote worker signalling, and improved code related to synchronization and worker processes. Their work also included optimizing database interactions by using indexes and refining error messages, demonstrating a focus on code quality and performance.
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