Ben Thul
Staff Engineer at Shopify
Bellevue, Washington, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolBen Thul is a Staff Engineer and seasoned database specialist with over 15 years managing large-scale database environments and a decade of focused engineering experience. Based in Bellevue, Washington, he has progressed from hands-on DBA roles to senior and staff-level platform engineering at companies including SurveyMonkey, Valve, and Shopify. He brings deep SQL Server expertise and production-hardened automation skills, evidenced by contributions to the widely used dbatools open-source PowerShell module where he improved migration, alerting, and backup behaviors. Ben is comfortable driving platform reliability and migrations at scale while also adding pragmatic test coverage and fixes that reduce operational risk. Known for bridging day-to-day operations with long-term platform improvements, he blends mathematical rigor from a BS in Mathematics with practical, production-first engineering. Colleagues would describe him as a pragmatic problem-solver who prefers shipping robust automation that prevents incidents before they start.
10 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
High School Diploma, High School Diploma at Richfield High SchoolBS Mathematics, BS Mathematics at University of Minnesota
Stackoverflow
31,784reputation
4.2mreached
1,200answers
24questions
database
top-1%
powershell
top-5%
queue
top-5%
stored-procedures
top-5%
sql
top-1%
sql-server
top-1%
Github Skills (31)
database-migrations10
data-migration10
server-migration10
tsql10
database-administration10
migration10
sql-server10
sql-migrations10
sql10
powershell10
database-migration10
migrate10
db-migration10
database10
stored-procedures9
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
dataplat/dbatools
Mar 2020 - Sep 2021
🚀 SQL Server automation and instance migrations have never been safer, faster or freer
Role in this project:
Database Engineer / Database Administrator
Database Engineer / Database AdministratorContributions:2 reviews, 8 commits, 20 PRs in 1 year 5 months
Contributions summary:Ben primarily contributed to the `dbatools` PowerShell module, a project focused on SQL Server automation. Their work involved implementing new parameters, modifying existing functionality, and adding tests for SQL Agent alerts, database role members, and database migration processes. The user also addressed issues related to backup compression and startup parameters, improving the module's reliability and functionality.
sqlserverbackupsaferserver-automationsql-server
ben-thul/DarlingData
Jul 2020 - Jan 2024
Open source SQL Server nonsense
Contributions:9 pushes, 4 branches in 3 years 6 months
sql-servermysqlsqlnonsensedatabase
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