Ben Lickly
Software Engineer at Google
Berkeley, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBen Lickly is a software engineer with 14 years of experience based in Berkeley, California, and a long tenure at Google where he applies deep expertise in type systems and backend tooling. He holds a Ph.D. in EECS from UC Berkeley and a B.S. in Math and Computer Science from Harvey Mudd, blending strong theoretical foundations with practical engineering. Ben has contributed to prominent open-source projects such as Tsickle (TypeScript to Closure translator) and the Google Closure Library, focusing on type-safety, bug fixes, and improving complex code paths like export handling and nullable dereferences. His work often targets subtle correctness and maintainability issues—adding failing unit tests, unwrapping complex AST nodes, and removing fragile suppressions—demonstrating an attention to long-term code health. Prior research roles and international collaborations (including time at Seoul National University) underscore his ability to bridge research and production engineering.
14 years of coding experience
5 years of employment as a software developer
Ph.D., EECS, Ph.D., EECS at University of California, BerkeleyB.S., Math and Computer Science, B.S., Math and Computer Science at Harvey Mudd College
Github Skills (11)
closure10
maintainability10
type-annotations10
google-closure-library10
typescript10
google-closure-compiler10
javascript10
typescripts10
typescript-types10
unit-testing9
build-automation8
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
angular/tsickle
Oct 2019 - Sep 2022
Tsickle — TypeScript to Closure Translator
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:11 commits, 2 PRs, 31 comments in 2 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Ben primarily contributed to the `tsickle` project, a TypeScript to Closure Translator, by fixing bugs and improving its functionality. Their work involved resolving infinite loops within the type translator, adding a failing unit test for a specific issue, and enabling type emission in unit tests. Furthermore, the user implemented support for unwrapping CommaListExpressions, enhancing the handling of complex export statements, and also removed unnecessary code suppression.
tsickletranslatortypescriptclosurei18n
google/closure-library
Jun 2020 - Nov 2022
Google's common JavaScript library
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:10 releases, 26 commits, 4 PRs in 2 years 5 months
Contributions summary:Ben primarily contributed to the Google Closure Library, focusing on the internal structure and type annotations. The commits demonstrate the user's work on fixing nullable type dereferences and removing ignored type annotations, which improved code quality and ensured better type checking. The user also implemented several changes, mainly related to updating annotations, showcasing a focus on type safety and maintainability within the codebase.
javascript-librarygooglejavascriptclosure-librarygoog
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