Jørgen Tjernø
Software Engineer at Netflix
Seattle, Washington, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolJørgen Tjernø is a seasoned software engineer with 17 years of systems and game-focused development experience, currently at Netflix after leading engineering efforts at Spry Fox and Undead Labs. He blends low-level systems work (SDL, drivers, networking) with game development and tooling, shipping performance-sensitive features and build/CI improvements across multiple platforms. A hands-on technical director and mentor, he has a track record of improving developer productivity, championing empathetic engineering cultures, and shaping product direction. An active open-source contributor, he has improved well-known projects like SDL and the Python REPL bpython, and helped harden infrastructure such as Mozilla’s Socorro and Jenkins Android emulation. Comfortable across C++, Rust, Python and platform tooling, he often focuses on reliability, debugging ergonomics and automation. Outside of work he balances game dev and systems programming — “Game dev by day & Rustacean by night” — reflecting a practical curiosity that leads to cross-cutting engineering improvements.
17 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
University of California, San DiegoNorwegian University of Science and Technology
Github Skills (48)
debugging10
debug10
c-language10
multiplatform10
python10
scripting10
sdl10
curses10
centos10
configuration-management10
open-source10
cross-platform10
c1110
network-programming10
java10
Programming languages (20)
Github contributions (5)
CorsixTH/CorsixTH
Feb 2011 - Jun 2015
Open source clone of Theme Hospital
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:55 commits, 5 PRs, 2 pushes in 4 years 5 months
Contributions summary:Jørgen primarily worked on fixing bugs and improving the existing codebase of the game. They implemented features such as adding a shorthand variable in the Lua console for debugging. They also addressed several issues, like preventing crashes when staff members left the game world and improving drug research functionalities. Additionally, the user refactored code to remove build warnings and set SVN EOL styles.
hospitalgamewindowslinuxremake
spurious/SDL-mirror
Feb 2013 - Nov 2014
An unofficial, automated SDL2 and SDL1.2 HG mirror.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:106 commits in 1 year 9 months
Contributions summary:Jørgen primarily contributed to the SDL2 and SDL1.2 HG mirror by fixing bugs related to joystick handling, refactoring initialization and shutdown of subsystems and implementing new game controller mappings. They fixed build issues and improved the accuracy of scan code mapping on Windows. Their work involved modifying the core SDL code to improve functionality and compatibility.
sdl1windowssdlsdl2playfab
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.