Ben Haynes
CEO & Founder at Forbes Technology Council
New York, New York, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBen Haynes is a seasoned founder and CEO with 14+ years leading product, design, and engineering teams, best known as the original creator and ongoing project lead of Directus, a leading open-source headless CMS and Open Data Platform. He combines hands-on front-end and UX craftsmanship—evident in extensive UI and theming contributions to the Directus repos—with strategic leadership running Monospace Inc and RANGER Studio. Prior roles at SoulCycle and AOL and a background as a Staff Sergeant in USAF Electronic Warfare give him a rare mix of operational discipline, system-level thinking, and product vision. He teaches and writes about web development, is a Forbes Technology Council member, and has delivered work for clients such as Google, Snapchat, Prada, and the U.S. Government. Ben’s career bridges creative design and rigorous engineering, often personally shipping UI fixes and features even while leading company strategy. Based in Brooklyn, he balances entrepreneurial scaling of an open-source ecosystem with deep, practical involvement in the product’s UX and developer experience.
14 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
High School Diploma, High School Diploma at Glastonbury High SchoolCyber/Electronic Operations and Warfare, Cyber/Electronic Operations and Warfare at Community College of the Air ForceBFA Communication Design, BFA Communication Design at University of Connecticut
Spanish
Stackoverflow
1,673reputation
152kreached
50answers
32questions
Github Skills (25)
javascript10
directus10
css10
responsive-design10
ui-design10
sc10
uid10
scs10
front-end-development10
vue10
html10
vue-jsx10
typescript9
typescript-types9
typescripts9
Programming languages (18)
Github contributions (5)
directus/directus
Mar 2013 - Jun 2022
The flexible backend for all your projects 🐰 Turn your DB into a headless CMS, admin panels, or apps with a custom UI, instant APIs, auth & more.
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:55 reviews, 1784 commits, 168 PRs in 9 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Ben primarily focused on front-end development within the Directus repository, making significant changes to UI components. Their work involved styling adjustments, theming, and responsive design improvements across multiple components such as list items, buttons, and the public view. They also made enhancements to component interactions and added features such as toggles and tooltips. The user's contributions reflect a focus on user interface design and improving the overall user experience.
authbackendcustom-uiheadless-cmsapi
directus/v8-archive
Apr 2018 - Jun 2021
Directus Database API — Wraps Custom SQL Databases with a REST/GraphQL API
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:252 commits, 16 PRs, 172 pushes in 3 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Ben primarily contributed to the front-end development of the Directus platform, focusing on UI/UX improvements and interface enhancements. Their work included modifying various interface components such as dropdowns, text inputs, radio buttons, and date pickers, in addition to adding new features such as a file-size format input option and a preview interface. They also made styling adjustments to align the UI with the Directus style guide, which suggests they worked on both the design and implementation of the platform's user interface.
database-apidirectusgraphql-apirestsql-database
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.