Jess Y is a Tokyo-based founder and game developer with 13 years of software engineering experience spanning Linux kernel development, backend systems, and indie mobile games. They transitioned from enterprise roles at Red Hat and SUSE—contributing to livepatch/kpatch and kernel stability—to founding studio rabbiko and independently shipping Usagi Shima, a relaxing bunny-collecting mobile game. Jess is an active open-source contributor to projects like DuckDuckGo’s Instant Answers, where they implemented full-stack Goodie features and improved content parsing and presentation with Perl, JavaScript, and CSS. Comfortable across low-level systems and user-facing experiences, they combine kernel-level rigor with pixel-level attention to game art and UX. An intriguing throughline in their career is moving smoothly between production-critical infrastructure work and crafting calming consumer experiences, demonstrating both technical depth and creative product sensibility.
14 years of coding experience
5 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts (BA), Computer Science, Bachelor of Arts (BA), Computer Science at University of California, Berkeley
Contributions:1 release, 87 commits, 60 PRs in 2 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Jess contributed to the kpatch project, which focuses on live kernel patching. Their work involved fixing bugs related to incorrect offsets for loadable modules and consolidating variables to reduce redundancy. The user also added functionality for checksum matching and restructured the sysfs interface. These changes demonstrate a focus on improving the stability and maintainability of the live patching functionality within the kernel.
DuckDuckGo Instant Answers based on keyword data files
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Contributions:50 commits in 2 months
Contributions summary:Jess primarily worked on parsing and extracting information from HTML man pages. Their contributions involved writing Perl scripts to fetch, process, and format the content of man pages, specifically focusing on extracting the "Name" and "Synopsis" sections. They also made adjustments to the fetching process and output format to align with specific requirements, including a change to the data source. The user's work resulted in a functional tool to extract and structure man page data.
pythonjavascriptduckduckgoinstant-answersruby
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