David Burns
Head Of Developer Advocacy And Open Source at W3C
New Forest, England, United Kingdom
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDavid Burns is a senior technology leader with 16 years' experience specialising in browser automation, testing infrastructure, and open source program leadership. As Head of Developer Advocacy and Open Source at BrowserStack and Chair/Editor for W3C's Browser Testing and WebDriver work, he bridges standards, large vendor coordination, and product-driven open source strategy. He has driven major projects across Selenium, geckodriver and Web Platform Tests, helped onboard NightwatchJS into BrowserStack, and still contributes hands-on to test suites and spec documentation. A community builder and author, he creates inclusive developer spaces and translates complex protocol work into usable tools and roadmaps. Based in the New Forest, he blends deep engineering craftsmanship with a proven track record of founding and scaling open source program teams.
16 years of coding experience
13 years of employment as a software developer
BA (HONS) Business Studies with ICT, BA (HONS) Business Studies with ICT at The Open UniversityUniversity of Johannesburg 
Stackoverflow
22,338reputation
3.8mreached
462answers
5questions
firefox
top-5%
selenium
top-1%
java
top-5%
javascript
top-5%
image
top-5%
webdriver
top-1%
Github Skills (41)
selenium-webdriver10
javascript10
webdriver10
selenium10
python10
marionette10
testing10
selenium-ide10
api-documentation10
firefox10
jestjs10
html10
automated-tests10
nodejs10
rust10
Programming languages (20)
Github contributions (5)
w3c/webdriver
Jan 2016 - Oct 2022
Remote control interface that enables introspection and control of user agents.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:28 reviews, 140 commits, 699 PRs in 6 years 10 months
Contributions summary:David primarily contributed to the documentation of the WebDriver specification. Their work included revising drafts of various sections, specifically focusing on interactions, and adding and updating command definitions. The user also made corrections to existing documentation, such as variable usage and links. They demonstrated a focus on ensuring the accuracy and completeness of the API documentation.
browsercontrol-interfaceremote-controlagentsw3c-specification
mozilla/geckodriver
Dec 2015 - Mar 2017
WebDriver for Firefox
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:29 releases, 22 commits, 31 PRs in 1 year 3 months
Contributions summary:David primarily contributed to the `geckodriver` project by enhancing its Marionette integration. Their work included handling arrays returned by Marionette, updating error handling, and adding functionality like GetPageSource, GetElementProperty, SetWindowPosition, and GetWindowPosition. Furthermore, the user modified the handling of alert text and added support for element screenshots. Their changes focused on extending the WebDriver API and improving its interaction with the Firefox browser's Marionette protocol.
firefoxrustgeckodrivergeckowebdriver
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.