Justin Downing
Software Engineering Architect at Heroku
California, United States
Summary
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RockstarJustin Downing is a Software Engineering Architect based in California with 13 years of experience designing and building reliable cloud data services. Currently architecting Heroku Data, he blends deep back-end engineering with a focus on secure, production-grade tooling for platform users. He is an active open-source contributor, notably improving Heroku CLI Redis workflows and adding TLS/client-certificate support to a Go-based Kafka CLI to harden communications with managed clusters. Justin’s work emphasizes practical developer experience improvements—clearer error messages, safer defaults, and optional configurability that reduce operational friction. Colleagues describe him as a pragmatic problem-solver who turns subtle security and UX gaps into robust, auditable solutions.
13 years of coding experience
Github Skills (15)
heroku-cli10
mtls10
command-line-interface10
nodejs10
apache-kafka10
go10
tls1210
tls1310
redis10
command-line10
libtls10
cli9
error-handling8
api-design8
configuration-management7
Programming languages (18)
Github contributions (5)
heroku/cli
Jun 2020 - Dec 2021
Heroku CLI
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:9 reviews, 7 commits, 10 PRs in 1 year 6 months
Contributions summary:Justin primarily contributed to the Heroku CLI, focusing on the `redis-v5` plugin. Their work included implementing features like the `redis:upgrade` command, modifying existing commands such as `redis:cli` to use TLS connections, and addressing bug fixes, especially around TLS configurations for private spaces. They also improved the configuration display output. These changes improved the user experience and functionality of the Heroku CLI, specifically for interacting with Redis databases.
heroku-cliherokuheroku-cli-plugin
birdayz/kaf
Jul 2019 - Aug 2019
Modern CLI for Apache Kafka, written in Go.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:5 commits, 2 PRs, 4 comments in 4 days
Contributions summary:Justin contributed to enhancing the security and functionality of the Kafka CLI tool. Their work included adding support for TLS client certificates, enabling secure communication with Kafka clusters. Furthermore, the user improved the user experience by implementing better error messages and refining the output format for topic creation and deletion commands. They also made the CAfile configuration optional, providing greater flexibility.
apache-kafkacligo
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