Derek Schaller
Principal Software Engineer at Pulumi
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDerek Schaller is a Principal Software Engineer based in San Francisco with a decade of experience building scalable back-end, DevOps, and automation systems. Currently at Pulumi after a multi-year tenure at Lyft, he specializes in improving build/test infrastructure, dependency management, and package automation for large-scale cloud-native projects. An active open-source contributor, Derek has meaningful contributions to high-profile projects like Envoy (adding CORS/CSRF features and CI fixes) and pipenv/pip-tools (enhancing dependency handling and CLI robustness). He combines hands-on engineering with infrastructure-level thinking—refactoring SaltStack modules, cleaning up macOS-specific packaging flows, and tightening test and lint workflows. Known for pragmatic tooling fixes that reduce developer friction, he often focuses on the often-overlooked edges: build scripts, virtualenv handling, and temporary mountpoint cleanup. His background spans iOS app development to automation frameworks, giving him a broad perspective across client, server, and infrastructure layers.
10 years of coding experience
15 years of employment as a software developer
Bishop O' Dowd High SchoolComputer Science, Computer Science at San José State UniversityBS Computer Science, BS Computer Science at California State University, Chico
Github Skills (38)
pip-tools10
pytest10
python10
pipfile10
scripting10
testing10
packaging10
command-line-interface10
configuration-management10
pip-compile10
requirements10
cicd10
automation10
script10
infrastructure10
Programming languages (13)
Github contributions (5)
envoyproxy/envoy
Oct 2016 - Oct 2020
Cloud-native high-performance edge/middle/service proxy
Role in this project:
DevOps & Automation Engineer
DevOps & Automation EngineerContributions:37 commits, 45 PRs, 136 comments in 4 years
Contributions summary:Derek primarily contributed to improving the build and test infrastructure, and the documentation. They fixed the check_repositories script for macOS, added a check for active virtual environments to the shell scripts, and enforced formatting for python tool files. The user also added a new CORS sandbox, and a CSRF filter, along with documentation fixes for the front proxy sandbox and custom headers.
nanoservicesmore-catsgolangcontainersproxy
jazzband/pip-tools
Feb 2017 - May 2017
A set of tools to keep your pinned Python dependencies fresh.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:13 commits, 12 PRs, 3 pushes in 3 months
Contributions summary:Derek primarily contributed to the `pip-tools` project by fixing bugs and enhancing existing functionality. Their work included addressing issues with unsafe dependencies, improving the generation of requirements files, and adding features for overriding compile commands. The user also implemented and added tests for handling unsafe dependencies. They demonstrated a strong understanding of the project's dependency management logic and its interaction with external Python packages.
dependenciespythonkeeplockfilepip
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