Connor Turland is a founder and engineering leader with 13 years of experience building distributed systems and developer tools from Victoria, BC. As Co-founder & CEO of Cyrus and previously Sprillow, he blends product leadership with hands-on backend engineering, particularly in Rust and peer-to-peer frameworks. He authored foundational Holochain developer training and contributed core backend improvements to the industrial-strength Holochain Rust codebase, showing deep expertise in DHTs, state integrity, and schema-driven refactors. Connor’s work spans shipping documentation and running global dev camps to resolving complex merge conflicts and tightening error types—roles that bridge developer experience and robust core platform engineering. Known for deploying large language model systems like Claude Code in production settings, he pairs open-source stewardship with startup execution. His background in Knowledge Integration & Computer Science from the University of Waterloo underpins a systems-first approach to product and developer ecosystems.
13 years of coding experience
13 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Knowledge Integration (candidate) Knowledge Integration & Computer Science, Bachelor of Knowledge Integration (candidate) Knowledge Integration & Computer Science at University of Waterloo
The current, performant & industrial strength version of Holochain on Rust.
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Contributions:96 reviews, 98 commits, 39 PRs in 2 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Connor focused on the backend development of the Holochain project, specifically working with Rust. Their contributions included adding specific error types to trait constraints within the zome types and the core state, improving code maintainability. They also addressed merge conflicts, showcasing experience with integrating changes from different development branches. The work is centered on core functionality of the Holochain framework itself.
Holographic storage for distributed applications -- a validating monotonic DHT "backed" by authoritative hashchains for data provenance (a Ceptr sub-project)
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Contributions:22 commits, 12 PRs, 16 pushes in 2 months
Contributions summary:Connor primarily focused on modifying and refactoring the application package configuration and core service logic within the Holochain project. They updated the structure of configuration objects, ensuring schema compliance for test inputs. The user also removed incomplete documentation and unnecessary artifacts, improving the overall code quality and maintainability. These changes suggest an active role in refining the core functionality and structure of the application.
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.