Emīls Piņķis
Senior Software Engineer Team Lead at Mullvad VPN
Greater Edinburgh Area United Kingdom
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolEmīls Piņķis is a Senior Software Engineer and team lead based in the Greater Edinburgh Area with 11 years of experience building reliable backend systems and shipping production software. Currently leading engineering at Mullvad VPN, he combines hands-on development with team leadership, having progressed from consultant to senior lead within the same security-focused product. His open-source contributions reveal deep systems and Rust expertise—improving a widely used Mullvad VPN client and enhancing a Rust DNS server’s robustness and ergonomics. Emīls has a practical background across startups and consultancy, a formal software engineering education from Edinburgh Napier, and a knack for turning low-level protocol and daemon work into user-facing improvements.
11 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor’s Degree, Computer Science, Bachelor’s Degree, Computer Science at Latvijas Universitate / University of LatviaBachelor’s Degree, Computer Software Engineering, Bachelor’s Degree, Computer Software Engineering at Edinburgh Napier University
Latvian, English
Github Skills (14)
rust10
nameserver10
dns10
vpn10
electron10
server10
wireguard10
dns-resolver10
concurrency9
openvpn9
error-handling9
nodejs9
testing8
front-end-development8
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
mullvad/mullvadvpn-app
Mar 2018 - Jan 2023
The Mullvad VPN client app for desktop and mobile
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:3 releases, 1615 reviews, 1292 commits in 4 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Emīls's commits focus on modifying and improving the Mullvad VPN client app. These changes include fixing issues within the daemon RPC types, implementing pretty printing for tunnel and proxy types, adding features like bridge info display in the GUI, and making adjustments to advanced settings. The contributions demonstrate an understanding of the app's internal workings and a focus on improving its user interface and functionality.
vpn-clientclient-appelectronrustmullvad
hickory-dns/hickory-dns
Jun 2021 - Nov 2021
A Rust based DNS client, server, and resolver
Role in this project:Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:2 reviews, 8 commits, 5 PRs in 5 months
Contributions summary:Emīls contributed to the core functionality of the `hickory-dns` project by implementing several key features and making critical improvements. They focused on enhancing the server-side components, including enabling cloning of `ForwardConfig`, allowing construction of responses for library users, and replacing features. Additionally, the user removed unused fields and addressed server task management by aborting tasks when dropped. These changes improve the DNS server's flexibility, usability, and robustness.
mdnsresolvedns-clientdnsresolver
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