Chris Smalley
Senior Software Engineer - Open Connect Tools at Netflix
San Jose, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolChris Smalley is a Senior Software Engineer in the San Jose area with 11 years of experience building scalable delivery and deployment systems, currently focused on Open Connect Tools at Netflix. He specializes in backend engineering and DevOps, contributing to high-profile open-source cloud-native projects like Spinnaker—improving API gateways, orchestration, caching, retry/saga mechanisms, and plugin infrastructure. Chris has a track record of modernizing CI/CD pipelines (migrating TravisCI to GitHub Actions), shaping reliable cross-cloud deployments including Netflix’s CDN, and driving pragmatic backend refactors across large distributed systems. He pairs deep systems expertise with a creative background in music and DSP tooling, reflecting an unusual blend of technical rigor and experimental problem-solving.
11 years of coding experience
17 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) English Literature, Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) English Literature at University of Minnesota
Spanish
Stackoverflow
221reputation
9kreached
1answer
6questions
Github Skills (52)
kotlin10
api-rest10
authorizations10
github-ci10
docker10
back-end-development10
apidoc10
api-design10
groovy10
restful-api10
testing10
plugin-development10
permission10
fest10
configuration-management10
Programming languages (10)
Github contributions (5)
spinnaker/kork
Oct 2019 - Mar 2021
Kork provides some basic service building blocks for Spinnaker.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:12 releases, 33 reviews, 74 commits in 1 year 5 months
Contributions summary:Chris primarily contributed to the development of backend features and configuration within the `kork` repository, a foundational library for Spinnaker. Their work included implementing and refactoring code for AWS bastion properties, removing legacy SSH support, and adding metrics. Additionally, the user made significant changes to the plugin infrastructure, including adding support for remote extension definitions, the addition of a configuration property, and handling plugin version configuration.
javabuilding-blocksspinnaker
spinnaker/fiat
Sep 2019 - Mar 2021
Spinnaker auth service
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:17 releases, 27 reviews, 39 commits in 1 year 5 months
Contributions summary:Chris primarily contributed to improving the error handling and messaging within the Spinnaker auth service, specifically focusing on access denied scenarios. They enhanced the clarity of error messages, providing more informative feedback to users when access is restricted. Additionally, the user refactored the code to improve overall readability and test various access-denied conditions. This involved modifications to Java and Groovy files within the fiat-api module, focusing on the FiatPermissionEvaluator and associated exception handling mechanisms.
authenticationspinnakerjwtauthauth-service
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