Derek Nelson
Product Manager at Confluent
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDerek Nelson is a product manager and former founder with 15 years of experience building data-driven systems, currently shaping product at Confluent in San Francisco. He co-founded PipelineDB (Y Combinator W'14), a time-series aggregation extension for PostgreSQL, and led its technology through acquisition, reflecting deep expertise in real-time analytics and database internals. Early hands-on work as a backend engineer at AdRoll and contributions to projects like Confluent's ksql demonstrate his continued ability to ship core features, fix subtle parser and sync bugs, and improve testing and schema design. Derek bridges product strategy and low-level engineering, comfortable modifying Postgres internals and implementing UDFs in stream-processing contexts. His background from UC Berkeley in computer science and founder experience gives him a practical blend of technical depth and startup grit. Colleagues describe him as a pragmatist who turns complex streaming and time-series requirements into reliable, production-ready systems.
15 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor's degree, Computer Science, Bachelor's degree, Computer Science at University of California, BerkeleyY Combinator
Stackoverflow
165reputation
18kreached
0answers
3questions
Github Skills (23)
postgresql10
java10
javas10
sql10
ksqldb10
stream-processing10
md59
commons9
apache-commons9
codec9
database-design9
aggregations9
time-series8
testing8
unit-testing7
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
pipelinedb/pipelinedb
Aug 2015 - May 2019
High-performance time-series aggregation for PostgreSQL
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Database Engineer
Back-end Developer & Database EngineerContributions:42 releases, 109 commits, 307 PRs in 3 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Derek contributed to the core backend functionality of the PipelineDB project. They focused on modifying and updating existing code within the PostgreSQL environment, specifically altering database schema and internal configuration files. Their work involved fixing bugs related to data synchronization and access control. Furthermore, the user made improvements to the project's testing procedures.
realtimeanalyticspushstream-processingstreaming-data
confluentinc/ksql
May 2019 - Feb 2022
The database purpose-built for stream processing applications.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:14 reviews, 48 commits, 33 PRs in 2 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Derek primarily contributed to the codebase by addressing minor issues and implementing a new feature. Their work involved fixing a parser error message, updating copyright information in welcome messages, and adding a new MD5 hash User Defined Function (UDF). The user demonstrated familiarity with Java, Apache Commons Codec, and the project's underlying database and stream processing functionalities.
materialized-viewsstream-processingstreaming-queriesksqldbsql
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