José Padilla
Principal Software Engineer at Okta
Hartford, Connecticut, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolJosé Padilla is a Principal Software Engineer with 16 years of experience building mobile and web applications, currently leading architecture and technical direction for Auth0 Fine-Grained Authorization at Okta. He combines deep backend expertise in Python/Django and Node.js with frontend experience in Ember.js, and a strong focus on application security, DevOps, and distributed systems performance. José is an active open-source maintainer — notable contributions include pyjwt and django-rest-framework-jwt where he improved cryptographic handling, cross-version compatibility, and packaging for downstream users. He co-founded multiple startups and product-focused consultancies (including FilePreviews), giving him hands-on product and operational experience from idea to production. Colleagues describe him as a technical leader who builds clarity and trust on teams while tackling hard authorization and scalability problems that power permission-aware AI and enterprise search. Based in Hartford with roots in Puerto Rico, he blends entrepreneurial grit with a pragmatic engineering mindset.
16 years of coding experience
18 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science (BS), Computer Science, Bachelor of Science (BS), Computer Science at Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Bayamon
Spanish, English
Github Skills (45)
api-rest10
pytest10
python10
api-design10
restful-api10
django10
testing10
rest-framework10
web-token10
configuration-management10
authentication10
django-rest10
user-authentication10
pyjwt10
api10
Programming languages (23)
Github contributions (5)
jpadilla/django-rest-framework-jwt
Jan 2014 - Aug 2019
JSON Web Token Authentication support for Django REST Framework
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:10 releases, 215 commits, 69 PRs in 5 years 7 months
Contributions summary:José primarily focused on fixing bugs and improving the functionality of the Django REST Framework JWT authentication library. Their contributions involved addressing failing tests across different Django and DRF versions, ensuring compatibility and stability. They updated the project's dependencies, like PyJWT, and made improvements to the code base to enhance its performance. Furthermore, they set up wheel distribution support, streamlining the release process of the package.
authenticationdjango-rest-frameworkjsonwebtokenrestpython
jpadilla/pyjwt
Jan 2014 - Oct 2022
JSON Web Token implementation in Python
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:27 releases, 166 reviews, 249 commits in 8 years 10 months
Contributions summary:José primarily focused on enhancing the `pyjwt` library by making the cryptographic signing and verifying methods optional. Their contributions included modifying the `jwt/__init__.py` file to enable the optional use of cryptographic methods and updating tests in `tests/test_jwt.py` to reflect these changes. The user also addressed compatibility issues, fixing tests for Python 2.6 support.
jsonwebtokenpythonjwt
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