Joel Berger
Senior Software Architect at Summit
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolJoel Berger is a Senior Software Architect in Chicago with 15 years of experience blending scientific rigor from a Ph.D. in Physics with pragmatic software engineering across Perl, Python, and Node. He architects and operates production web and backend systems, currently leading development and DevOps for internal and client-facing applications at Summit. A long-time Mojolicious core contributor, he has improved real-time web framework internals, WebSocket handling, and high-performance non-blocking routes used in prominent benchmark suites. His background in ultrafast electron microscopy informs a methodical, measurement-driven approach to performance and reliability. Colleagues rely on him to refactor legacy systems into efficient APIs and to bridge research-grade problem solving with production-grade deployments.
14 years of coding experience
2 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Physics, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Physics at University of Illinois ChicagoFremd HS
Stackoverflow
20,220reputation
2.0mreached
491answers
35questions
latex
top-5%
regex
top-5%
pdf
top-5%
perl
top-1%
parsing
top-5%
json
top-5%
Github Skills (68)
postgresql10
web-application10
mojolicious10
http10
websocket10
perl10
elasticsearchquery10
websockets-client10
aws-elasticsearch10
elasticsearch10
web-development10
backend10
client-websocket10
elasticsearch-api10
javascript10
Programming languages (21)
Github contributions (5)
metacpan/metacpan-api
Jan 2013 - Nov 2018
A free, open API for everything you want to know about CPAN
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:41 commits, 10 PRs, 31 pushes in 5 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Joel primarily focused on enhancing the backend functionality of the MetaCPAN API. Their contributions include the development of a script for retrieving and indexing CPAN river data, implementing features to accept gzipped river data, and refactoring search logic from the frontend. They also worked on restructuring the codebase, including moving models and controller logic.
apieverythingpythonmetacpanperl
TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks
Feb 2014 - Jun 2018
Source for the TechEmpower Framework Benchmarks project
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & DevOps Engineer
Back-end Developer & DevOps EngineerContributions:39 commits, 4 PRs, 13 comments in 4 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Joel primarily focused on developing and improving the back-end of the Mojolicious framework within the repository. Their contributions included refactoring the application for non-blocking operations, implementing new routes, and optimizing database interactions. They also demonstrated DevOps skills by updating dependencies, improving the setup script, and configuring the application's deployment environment with tools such as carton and hypnotoad. Furthermore, the user updated configurations for production usage.
techempowerframeworkbenchmarkperformancebenchmarks
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