Devan Benz
Senior Software Engineer at InfluxData
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDevan Benz is a Senior Software Engineer based in Chicago with nine years of experience building reliable back-end systems and working closely with databases. Now at InfluxData, he brings practical expertise in SQL engines and storage internals, evidenced by notable open-source contributions to Apache DataFusion and DuckDB where he improved query functions, projection behaviors, and secure secret storage handling. He has a hands-on history from field-level tech support to production engineering, which gives him a pragmatic approach to debugging, file handling, and permission-safe implementations. Colleagues rely on him for thoughtful refactors that reduce data corruption risk and for clear technical documentation of complex features like EXPLAIN/ANALYZE. Comfortable across systems from embedded analytical databases to cloud-native time-series platforms, he pairs low-level code craft with product-focused problem solving. Outside of core duties he gravitates toward database internals and enjoys turning vague error reports into reproducible fixes.
9 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Associate of Science - AS, Computer Science, Associate of Science - AS, Computer Science at College of DuPage
English
Github Skills (16)
fusion10
dataframes10
query-engine10
filesystem10
rust10
c-language10
embedded-database10
cprogramming-language10
sql10
file-operations10
fileio10
dataframe10
arrow-js9
arrow-keys9
arrows9
Programming languages (13)
Github contributions (5)
apache/datafusion
Apr 2024 - Nov 2024
Apache DataFusion SQL Query Engine
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:37 reviews, 14 PRs, 101 comments in 7 months
Contributions summary:Devan primarily contributed to enhancing the `datafusion` SQL query engine, focusing on implementing features and addressing internal errors. Their work included supporting `StringView` for the `TRANSLATE()` function and addressing projection issues within `DataFrame` operations. They also added documentation for the `EXPLAIN` and `EXPLAIN ANALYZE` features. Furthermore, the user updated the `CONCAT` and `CONCAT_WS` scalar functions to support `Utf8View`.
querypythonquery-enginedataframerust
duckdb/duckdb
Jul 2024 - Jul 2024
DuckDB is an analytical in-process SQL database management system
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:1 PR, 6 comments in 5 days
Contributions summary:Devan primarily focused on improving the secret storage functionality within the DuckDB database. Their contributions involved modifying the `secret_storage.cpp` and `secret_manager.cpp` files. These changes included refactoring file handling, implementing temporary file usage, and addressing issues related to file access permissions and potential data corruption. The changes also include a re-addition of header files that were removed.
management-systemanalyticsduckdbmysqlembedded-database
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