Kendall Nelson
Senior Upstream Developer Advocate
Lakeville, Minnesota, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolKendall Nelson is a Senior Upstream Developer Advocate with a decade of experience helping open source and cloud infrastructure projects thrive, currently based in Lakeville, Minnesota. At the Open Infrastructure Foundation since 2021 (and previously at OpenStack), Kendall blends hands-on engineering roots with community engagement to drive adoption and contributor success for upstream projects. Early engineering stints at IBM and multiple internships gave a practical foundation in software development, while long-term advocacy work demonstrates an ability to translate technical complexity into accessible developer workflows. Kendall’s background includes frontline customer-facing roles—still working at Sweet Martha's Cookie Jar—which reflects a pragmatic, service-oriented approach to community building. Trained in computer science at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, they pair formal education with real-world open source experience to shepherd collaboration across distributed teams. Notably, Kendall’s career path shows a rare mix of core engineering, developer advocacy, and hands-on customer service that helps bridge technical and human-centered priorities.
10 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Diploma, Diploma at Academy of Holy AngelsUniversity of Minnesota Twin CitiesAssociate of Science (A.S.), Computer Science, Associate of Science (A.S.), Computer Science at Normandale Community College
Spanish
Github Skills (53)
kubernetes9
sensu9
cicd9
continuous-integration9
task-tracking9
storage9
devops9
elections9
openstack9
opendev9
system-administration8
cinder8
openflow8
blockchain8
meta7
Programming languages (8)
Github contributions (5)
openstack/training-guides
Sep 2016 - Oct 2020
Contributions:50 commits in 4 years 2 months
openstacktraining
openstack/contributor-guide
Oct 2017 - Nov 2021
Contributions:23 commits in 4 years 1 month
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