Jelmer Draaijer is a pragmatic software engineer with a decade of experience building and maintaining Django-based back ends, REST APIs and DevOps tooling from Friesland, Netherlands. He has led and delivered production systems for clients and his own consultancy (Jelmert Engineering), tackling projects from enrollment integrations to survey management and reporting. Jelmer contributes to well-known open-source Django projects—improving compatibility with Python 3.11/3.12 and enhancing autoreload behavior—showing a focus on maintainability and developer experience. His work spans hands-on feature development, infrastructure automation (AWS CLI in Docker, S3/mailgun config) and long-term maintenance of critical systems. Combining an MSc in Sociology with a background in software engineering, he brings analytical thinking to user- and data-driven backend problems. Colleagues would describe him as a steady contributor who prefers practical, long-lived solutions over flashy one-offs.
9 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science (MSc) Sociologie (Sociology), Master of Science (MSc) Sociologie (Sociology) at University of Groningen
Bachelor of ICT Computer Software Engineering, Bachelor of ICT Computer Software Engineering at NHL Hogeschool
Cookiecutter Django is a framework for jumpstarting production-ready Django projects quickly.
Role in this project:
Back-end & DevOps Engineer
Contributions:67 reviews, 17 commits, 139 PRs in 4 years
Contributions summary:Jelmer primarily contributed to the back-end and infrastructure aspects of the Django project. Their work included adding and configuring environment variables for mailgun and AWS S3, adding AWS CLI docker container for backups, and upgrading the Python and Django versions. They also implemented code changes related to Django project settings.
This is a repository for collecting global custom management extensions for the Django Framework.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Contributions:4 reviews, 3 commits, 12 PRs in 14 days
Contributions summary:Jelmer contributed to the django-extensions project by implementing features and resolving issues within the Django framework. Their work includes updating the project to support Python 3.11 and 3.12, enhancing the autoreload functionality for template changes, and addressing how pip resolves distributions. These changes involve modifying both Python code and configuration files to improve compatibility and functionality. The contributions demonstrate a focus on improving core functionality and maintenance.
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Jelmer Draaijer - Software-ingenieur at Greatwaves