Davey Shafik
CTO & Founder at Beacon HQ
Seattle, Washington, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolDavey Shafik is a seasoned engineering leader and polyglot developer with over two decades of experience building and stewarding PHP ecosystems, currently founder and CTO of Beacon HQ in Seattle. He has held prominent roles including Release Manager for PHP 7.1, creator of PHAR (PHP Archive), and Staff Developer Advocate at Lyft, blending deep systems-level knowledge with developer-facing advocacy. Davey is a prolific open-source contributor and maintainer, with backend and framework work spanning projects like lithium, Zend Framework, XHProf/XHGUI and the php.net site, often focusing on performance, security, and interoperability. He’s also an author and international speaker—best known for the Zend PHP Certification Study Guide—who translates complex internals into practical guidance for teams and communities. Beyond code, he co-organizes mental health initiatives and has supported diversity efforts like PHPWomen, reflecting a commitment to healthier, more inclusive tech cultures.
23 years of coding experience
19 years of employment as a software developer
BTEC National Diploma Computing, BTEC National Diploma Computing at Leicester College
Stackoverflow
370reputation
4kreached
7answers
0questions
Github Skills (54)
unit-testing10
application-framework10
api-rest10
content-negotiation10
maintenance10
bootstrap10
apidoc10
api-design10
mysql10
restful-api10
testing10
css10
app-framework10
responsive-design10
zend-framework10
Programming languages (18)
Github contributions (5)
frapi/frapi
Feb 2011 - Apr 2013
FRAPI is an API Open Source framework, run it within your hosting environment parallel to your web app, mobile service or legacy system.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:54 commits, 1 PR in 2 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Davey implemented several features related to custom responses and content negotiation within the FRAPI framework. They added the ability to return custom responses with specific mimetypes, data, and parameters, including support for dynamic formats. The user also refactored authorization components and fixed issues related to parsing request bodies and handling extensions for output formats. These changes improved the flexibility and robustness of the API framework.
hostingapiwebservicemobile-web-appparallel
php/web-php
Jun 2016 - Apr 2017
The www.php.net site
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:22 commits, 2 PRs in 10 months
Contributions summary:Davey focused on updating the PHP documentation website for the PHP 7.1.0 release. This involved modifying configuration files to include the version information, release announcements, and changelogs. The changes primarily involved updating the website content to reflect the new version and its features, and fixing various related issues.
phpphp7
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