Dean Coakley
Software Engineer at Tigera
Munster, Ireland
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDean Coakley is a software engineer with 10 years of experience building cloud-native, distributed systems using Go and Python, currently focused on layer-7 networking at Tigera. He has deep hands-on expertise in Kubernetes, NGINX, Docker, and observability, having contributed notable features and fixes to high-profile open-source projects like Helm, Minikube, and the NGINX Kubernetes Ingress and Prometheus exporter. At F5/NGINX he delivered production-grade enhancements—gRPC support, stream metrics, retry logic, and templating improvements—demonstrating a blend of backend engineering and DevOps sensibility. His open-source work shows attention to quality and maintainability, with multiple refactors, added tests, and edge-case bug fixes (e.g., octal conversions and negative-value handling). Based in Munster, Ireland, he’s active in the Kubernetes community (deanc on the Kubernetes Slack) and favors pragmatic tooling and automation for reliable, observable systems.
10 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science - BSc Software Development, Bachelor of Science - BSc Software Development at Munster Technological University
English, German
Stackoverflow
1,745reputation
208kreached
31answers
9questions
javascript
top-5%
jquery
top-5%
Github Skills (50)
podman10
json10
kubernetes10
container10
docker10
charts10
ingress10
testing10
js-template10
dockers10
charting10
go10
prometheus10
helm10
kubernetes-pods10
Programming languages (20)
Github contributions (5)
nginx/kubernetes-ingress
Apr 2018 - Mar 2021
NGINX and NGINX Plus Ingress Controllers for Kubernetes
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & DevOps Engineer
Back-end Developer & DevOps EngineerContributions:8 releases, 216 reviews, 205 commits in 2 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Dean primarily focused on enhancing the NGINX Kubernetes Ingress controller's functionality. They implemented support for gRPC, custom configuration templates, and rate-limiting policies, demonstrating a focus on extending the controller's capabilities. Furthermore, the user addressed several inconsistencies in the code base and integrated workqueue metrics, indicating a concern for code quality, performance, and maintainability. These changes span across multiple files, suggesting contributions to both backend logic and potential DevOps aspects.
golangnginxcontrollersingress-controllerdocker
nginx/nginx-prometheus-exporter
Aug 2018 - May 2021
NGINX Prometheus Exporter for NGINX and NGINX Plus
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:2 releases, 22 reviews, 17 commits in 2 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Dean significantly contributed to the NGINX Prometheus Exporter project, adding essential features and improving the existing codebase. They implemented support for stream metrics, extending the exporter's functionality to include stream-related data from NGINX Plus. The user also addressed critical issues by implementing retry mechanisms for client connections and fixing a bug related to negative values, ensuring better reliability and stability of the exporter. Furthermore, the user added and updated environment variables and command-line flags, as well as updating dependencies.
nginxexporterprometheus-exporterprometheusnginx-plus
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