Dirk Gadsden
Staff Software Engineer at Coinbase
Oakland, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolDirk Gadsden is a staff software engineer with 17 years of experience building scalable web platforms and leading engineering teams across consumer commerce and marketplace businesses. He’s driven rapid product launches and platform modernizations—from taking Brandless from zero to launch and scaling it as technical lead, to rearchitecting Etsy’s localization and translation systems to 10x throughput. Comfortable across stacks, Dirk has shipped backend systems in Ruby and Rust, improved frontend build tooling (Webpack→Vite), and optimized performance and reliability for high-traffic sites. He contributes to open-source language and tracing projects like the Gleam compiler and Datadog’s dd-trace-rb, emphasizing type safety, tracing, and test automation. Based in Oakland, he pairs hands-on implementation with mentorship and organizational leadership, and has a knack for simplifying complex systems into maintainable, high-throughput workflows. An early technical co-founder of an election-tech startup, he brings entrepreneurial grit and a strong focus on auditable, production-grade engineering.
17 years of coding experience
14 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts (BA) Computer Science, Bachelor of Arts (BA) Computer Science at College of Charleston
Stackoverflow
271reputation
10kreached
7answers
0questions
Github Skills (34)
static-typing10
programming-language10
cargo10
type-check10
tracer10
testing10
distributed-tracing10
strongly-typed10
sidekiq10
apm10
ruby10
compiler-compiler10
gleam10
build-automation10
compiler10
Programming languages (14)
Github contributions (5)
atom-archive/xray
Jan 2018 - Mar 2018
An experimental next-generation Electron-based text editor
Role in this project:
Backend Developer & Automation Engineer
Backend Developer & Automation EngineerContributions:23 commits, 3 PRs, 5 comments in 1 month
Contributions summary:Dirk primarily focused on backend development and build automation within the repository. They implemented error handling and exception management within the N-API module, demonstrating proficiency in Rust and its integration with Node.js. Additionally, the user added commands for documentation generation and enhanced the build process, including the use of `rustfmt` for code formatting. These actions signify involvement in improving developer experience and maintaining code quality.
next-generationelectrontext-basedtext-editoreditor
DataDog/dd-trace-rb
Nov 2018 - Nov 2018
Datadog Tracing Ruby Client
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Test Automation Engineer
Back-end Developer & Test Automation EngineerContributions:12 commits, 3 PRs, 11 comments in 15 days
Contributions summary:Dirk primarily contributed to the Datadog Ruby tracing client, specifically focusing on integrating and testing Sidekiq instrumentation. Their work involved adding client-side middleware for tracing Sidekiq job enqueues and server-side middleware for tracing job execution. They refactored code to improve maintainability by abstracting common Sidekiq tracer functionality into a base class. The user also added tests to verify the behavior of the Sidekiq tracers, including tests for scenarios with no parent spans.
apmtracingruby-clientrubydatadog-tracing
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.