Summary
Jarkko Hietaniemi is a senior software engineer and architect with 30 years of experience building system-level software, language tools, and portable cross-platform solutions. He is the creator of CPAN and a long-time Perl5 contributor who led the Perl 5.8 release, combining deep open-source stewardship with commercial engineering at companies including Google, Fastly, and currently Apple. His expertise spans system programming, OS internals, internationalization, and source-code tooling, with a track record of shipping embedded and infrastructure software used by millions (notably software running on the London Central Line). Jarkko blends research-era rigor from Nokia Research and Helsinki University of Technology with entrepreneurial practice as founder of Bittialasin Oy. He is particularly skilled at getting complex code to run on non-mainstream platforms, a discipline that improves robustness across ecosystems. Based in Helsinki, he continues to influence both proprietary and open-source stacks through architecture and hands-on implementation.
30 years of coding experience
30 years of employment as a software developer
MSc, Computer Science, MSc, Computer Science at Teknillinen korkeakoulu-Tekniska högskolan