Derek Caswell is a seasoned Staff Software Engineer and team lead with over a decade of experience building and modernizing PHP-based web systems, particularly with Laravel and CodeIgniter. He combines backend expertise—API design, relational database architecture, and microservices—with practical front-end skills in JavaScript, Bootstrap, and Vue to deliver end-to-end product improvements. Derek has led teams, managed offshore contractors, and driven standards and processes for compliance (SOC2, HIPAA) while acting as Scrum Master and architect for migration projects. An active contributor to the CodeIgniter4 project, he has enhanced JSON/XML handling and testing in a widely used open-source PHP framework. Based in Spanish Fork, Utah, he stays engaged in the PHP community as a co-organizer of the Utah PHP User Group and frequently applies UX and system-design thinking to make complex workflows auditable and user-friendly.
9 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
Diploma College/University Preparatory and Advanced High School/Secondary Diploma Program, Diploma College/University Preparatory and Advanced High School/Secondary Diploma Program at Harrisburg High School
Bachelors Information Technologies, Bachelors Information Technologies at Brigham Young University
Open Source PHP Framework (originally from EllisLab)
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Contributions:11 reviews, 35 commits, 13 PRs in 8 months
Contributions summary:Derek primarily contributed to enhancing the CodeIgniter4 framework's capabilities by adding and modifying features related to handling JSON requests and formatting. They implemented new methods and modified existing ones within the `Validation` and `FeatureTestTrait` classes to support JSON input and request body formats. Additionally, the user addressed documentation gaps and improved the API response handling for JSON and XML formats, ensuring consistent and correct responses. Their work focused on expanding the framework's testing capabilities and API response handling.
Contributions:2 PRs, 23 pushes, 10 branches in 11 months
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Derek Caswell - Staff Software Engineer, Lead at Echo360