Elliot Denolf
Software Engineer at Figma
Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolElliot Denolf is a seasoned software engineer and founder with 13 years building high-availability, enterprise-grade systems and developer tools. He combines deep hands-on expertise in containerization, CI/CD, event-driven serverless architectures, and high-throughput services with a track record of optimizing DynamoDB access patterns and scaling endpoints to thousands of requests per second. As Founder & CTO of Payload and a core contributor to the popular open-source Payload Next.js framework, he has shipped full-stack TypeScript backends, admin panels, and access-control/versioning features used by other developers. Now at Figma, he’s bridging OSS and product integrations, applying both startup agility and large-org engineering practices honed at Nordstrom and Extend. Based in Grand Rapids, Elliot pairs entrepreneurial leadership with pragmatic engineering—often surfacing infrastructure-level fixes from active code and test refactors that improve long-term reliability.
13 years of coding experience
14 years of employment as a software developer
YC S22, YC S22 at Y CombinatorBachelor of Science - BS Information Systems Business Minor, Bachelor of Science - BS Information Systems Business Minor at Grand Valley State University
Stackoverflow
2,951reputation
209kreached
111answers
0questions
Github Skills (15)
access-control10
typescript10
typescripts10
payload10
react10
typescript-types10
testing9
javascript9
nextjs9
debugging6
autohotkey6
windows6
hammerspoon6
hotkeys6
keyboard-shortcuts6
Programming languages (18)
Github contributions (5)
payloadcms/payload
Apr 2018 - Jan 2023
Payload is the open-source, fullstack Next.js framework, giving you instant backend superpowers. Get a full TypeScript backend and admin panel instantly. Use Payload as a headless CMS or for building powerful applications.
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:227 releases, 286 reviews, 615 commits in 4 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Elliot refactored testing directories and implemented access control within the Payload framework. The commits indicate the development and testing of core functionality related to user authentication and access control. Furthermore, the user's contributions include the implementation of features like versioning and relationship implementations within the project.
cmspayloadcmsexpressreact-jsdashboard
denolfe/untappd
May 2015 - Aug 2018
A third-party API for accessing Untappd data :beer:
Contributions:17 commits, 2 PRs, 13 pushes in 3 years 4 months
apipartyuntappdthird-party-apithird-party
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