Luke Barnard
Chief Technology Officer at kankyo.
Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolLuke Barnard is a pragmatic software leader and CTO with 11 years of hands-on experience building full-stack systems, currently based in Zurich. He blends front-end expertise in React/TypeScript and design systems with deep back-end work in Python and Node.js, having contributed to prominent open-source projects like Matrix (Synapse, matrix-js-sdk) and Bokeh. Luke has a track record of shipping reliable, user-focused products at startups and scale-ups—leading accessibility initiatives, mentoring engineers, and stepping into design and community roles when needed. His contributions include server hardening, sync and rate-limit improvements for Matrix homeservers, and enhancing Bokeh’s server and JSON handling—signals of a developer who cares about robustness and interoperability. Comfortable across the stack, he thrives in small teams where technical leadership, pragmatic architecture, and product sensibility drive impact.
11 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
St Thomas More RC Upper SchoolBachelor of Science (B.Sc.), Computer Science, Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), Computer Science at University of Bath
French, German
Github Skills (21)
data-visualizations10
javascript10
rate-limiting10
postgresql10
matrix10
bokeh10
python10
apidoc10
back-end-development10
http10
user-authentication10
authentication10
data-visualisation10
syn10
api10
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc
Jul 2016 - Jun 2018
Node.js IRC bridge for Matrix
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:615 commits, 123 PRs, 325 pushes in 1 year 10 months
Contributions summary:Luke implemented features to enhance private messaging (PM) functionality within the IRC bridge. Their work included adding options for federated or non-federated PM rooms and ensuring that the correct parameters were used to set the rooms accordingly. They also introduced checks on the origin of messages when PM federation was disallowed. The changes touched upon the IRC server, bridge, and integration tests to verify the added logic.
node-jsirc-bridgejavascriptbridgenodejs
matrix-org/matrix-js-sdk
Oct 2016 - Jul 2018
Matrix Client-Server SDK for JavaScript
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:8 releases, 90 commits, 91 PRs in 1 year 8 months
Contributions summary:Luke primarily contributed to the back-end functionality of the matrix-js-sdk, as evidenced by the changes to `lib/client.js`, `lib/sync.js`, and `lib/base-apis.js`. Their work includes implementing features such as setting filters prior to initial sync, adding functionality for setting room directory visibility for application services, and implementing APIs for group and user directory interactions. The user also addressed several issues related to event handling and the underlying sync mechanisms of the SDK.
matrix-chatjavascriptclient-serversdkmatrix-sdk
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