Jon Rafkind
Principal Software Engineer at Voltage Park
Palo Alto, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolJon Rafkind is a Principal Software Engineer with 20 years of experience building and refining complex systems from security analysis tools to performance-focused back ends. Based in Palo Alto, he blends deep research roots (PhD work on syntactic extensions and macros) with hands-on production engineering across startups and enterprise teams, most recently at HeadSpin and Voltage Park. He has led engineering organizations and hands-on projects alike, contributing to build systems and platform portability in notable open-source projects like Allegro 5 and clarifying language docs for Racket. His background spans languages and platforms—from C and Java algorithmic trading components to security tooling at HP Fortify—showing both low-level systems skill and product-minded delivery. Colleagues rely on him for pragmatic architecture choices that improve build reproducibility and cross-platform operability. A detail-oriented engineer, he often surfaces non-obvious wins by improving developer experience through better build tooling and documentation.
20 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
The University of UtahBS Computer Science, BS Computer Science at Northeastern University
Stackoverflow
1,143reputation
41kreached
6answers
16questions
Github Skills (20)
racket10
syntax10
documentation10
c178
c118
generator7
async-await6
game-development6
cprogramming-language6
haskell6
scheme6
functional-programming6
android6
multithreading6
asynchronous6
Programming languages (13)
Github contributions (5)
liballeg/allegro5
Dec 2005 - Aug 2015
The official Allegro 5 git repository. Pull requests welcome!
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:277 commits, 1 push, 6 comments in 9 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Jon's primary contribution involves adding and modifying SCons build scripts, indicating a focus on build system maintenance and configuration within the Allegro 5 project. The user added scripts for BSD and Linux, and introduced features such as the ability to add tools, tests, and examples. Further work includes optimizing the build system with debug/static options and incorporating platform-specific compiler flags and code adjustments.
unixgit-repositoryosxwindowsandroid
racket/racket
Mar 2008 - Mar 2013
The Racket repository
Role in this project:Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:444 commits, 1 comment in 5 years
Contributions summary:Jon contributed primarily to documentation within the Racket repository. Their commits added numerous examples and clarified the usage of various language features, including file ports, syntax forms, and generator functions. The user also fixed typos and improved the overall clarity and completeness of the documentation. The user demonstrated a focus on explaining Racket's features and syntax in a way that is accessible to a wide audience.
code-golfschemepolyglotlanguage-designprogramming-languages
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