Lincoln Russell
Sr Director Of Product at Prosembler
Detroit, Michigan, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolLincoln Russell is a senior product and engineering leader with 16 years building B2B2C SaaS at companies from five to 150 people, currently serving as Sr Director of Product and co-founding Prosembler to advance self-governance and data ownership. He blends hands-on backend engineering—ten years contributing to Vanilla Forums’ core and add-ons—with executive experience founding ELTs, hiring at scale, and running security, compliance, and delivery as a VP. Known for thriving in change and crisis, he drives sustainable processes (Kanban, SDLC, automated pipelines, feature flagging) that repeatedly cut delivery time and reduce defects. Lincoln’s leadership style focuses on growing self-critical, autonomous teams by creating leadership opportunities and curating context for others to succeed. His open-source work on Vanilla shows deep practical expertise in hypermedia, file upload reliability, and event-driven modularity that inform his product decisions. Based in Detroit, he pairs pragmatic engineering instincts with a long track record of negotiating enterprise deals and launching mission-driven community tech like Agorakit and Nitro Porter.
16 years of coding experience
15 years of employment as a software developer
Martial Arts, Martial Arts at School of Martial ArtsBachelor of Science - BS, Technology in Education & Society, Bachelor of Science - BS, Technology in Education & Society at Juniata College
Github Skills (12)
mvc-framework10
php10
api10
backend10
back-end-development10
apidoc10
event-handling9
database9
databases9
maintenance8
code-optimization8
code-cleanup8
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
vanilla/addons
Sep 2011 - Apr 2019
Official add-ons and tools for Vanilla Forums.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:624 commits, 218 PRs, 264 pushes in 7 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Lincoln primarily focused on enhancing the FileUpload plugin within the `vanilla/addons` repository. Their contributions involved adding hooks and fixes for utilizing the file upload API, along with code adjustments to handle new comment data storage and ensure proper image insertion, even when CLEditor is enabled. The user's work involved addressing cloud storage issues and implementing more features, focusing on overall reliability and feature enhancements.
discourseadd-onsvanilla-forumsaddonsforum
vanilla/vanilla
Oct 2009 - May 2020
Vanilla is a powerfully simple discussion forum you can easily customize to make as unique as your community.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:22 releases, 3400 commits, 1499 PRs in 10 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Lincoln contributed to the core codebase, focusing on backend logic by implementing and extending functionality within various models and controllers. The changes involve adding functionality to existing endpoints to interact with profile data and improving the overall modularity by introducing events to improve maintainability. Several commits included updates to existing functions within the framework such as adding checks for banned users.
vanilla-forumssimple-discussionphpforumdiscussion-board
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