James Lopez
Senior Engineering Manager at GitLab
A Coruña, Galicia, Spain
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolJames Lopez is a senior engineering leader at GitLab with 14 years of experience building and scaling backend systems, developer tools, and distributed infrastructure. He has progressed from senior backend engineer and maintainer of GitLab.com deployment tooling to managing and growing multiple infra teams, hiring from scratch, and introducing metrics and automation to improve predictability and on-call processes for a globally distributed org. Technically grounded in Ruby/Rails and DevOps, his open-source contributions include compatibility and protocol work on high-profile GitLab projects like gitlab-shell and core CE, improving Git protocol support and reliability. He combines hands-on problem solving—fixing tricky Ruby/WEBrick and git-annex integrations—with servant leadership focused on career development, diversity, and process improvement. Based in A Coruña, Spain, he also brings an analytical background (Astrophysics pathway studies) that surfaces in methodical, data-driven approaches to engineering challenges.
14 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science - BS, Astrophysics pathway, Bachelor of Science - BS, Astrophysics pathway at The Open UniversityComputer Systems Administration, Computer Science, 80, Computer Systems Administration, Computer Science, 80 at Fernando Wirtz, A Coruña - SpainTechnological European Baccalaureate, Technological European Baccalaureate at IES Someso
English, Spanish, Galician, Portuguese
Github Skills (7)
git10
gitaly10
ruby10
testing9
api8
devops8
rspec7
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
gitlabhq/gitlabhq
Oct 2015 - Sep 2019
GitLab CE Mirror | Please open new issues in our issue tracker on GitLab.com
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:1984 commits, 65 pushes, 7 branches in 3 years 11 months
Contributions summary:James's commits primarily focused on improving the GitHub Rake importer, particularly addressing error handling related to incorrect GitLab usernames. They made changes to core parts of the codebase, including the Gitaly client, and also modified test specifications. The changes indicate a focus on improving the reliability and user experience of the project.
gitlab-apinew-issuestrackerrailsgitea
gitlabhq/gitlab-shell
Feb 2016 - Jul 2018
Replacement for gitolite. This repo is a mirror of https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-shell/
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & DevOps Engineer
Back-end Developer & DevOps EngineerContributions:13 commits in 2 years 6 months
Contributions summary:James's contributions primarily focused on addressing compatibility issues related to Ruby version 2.2 and integrating Git protocol version 2 within the GitLab Shell project. They implemented workarounds for WEBrick-related problems, improved git-annex integration, and updated specifications to reflect these changes. The user also updated the project's gitaly-proto dependency and made a small refactoring to the codebase.
gitoliteshellreplacementgitlab
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