Roan Kattouw
Principal Software Engineer at Wikimedia Foundation
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRoan Kattouw is a Principal Software Engineer based in San Francisco with 18 years of experience building and maintaining large-scale web platforms at the Wikimedia Foundation. He blends deep backend expertise—particularly in ResourceLoader and caching systems—with hands-on contributions that added single-file Vue component parsing and dependency compatibility to MediaWiki, the engine behind Wikipedia. Roan has moved between individual contributor and engineering management roles, bringing both technical rigor and team-oriented delivery since 2009. He holds an MS in Computer Science from Stanford and a BSc from the University of Groningen, pairing strong academic foundations with long-term production experience. Known for quietly improving core infrastructure, he focuses on sustainable, backward-compatible changes that keep widely used open-source systems healthy at scale.
18 years of coding experience
6 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science (BSc), Computer Science, Bachelor of Science (BSc), Computer Science at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen / University of GroningenMaster of Science (MS), Computer Science, Master of Science (MS), Computer Science at Stanford University
Dutch, English, German, French
Github Skills (12)
php10
vue-jsx9
vue9
lessc8
javascript8
css8
autobuild7
deployment-automation7
build-automation7
automated-build7
automation7
release-automation7
Programming languages (16)
Github contributions (5)
wikimedia/mediawiki
Feb 2012 - Dec 2022
🌻 The collaborative editing software that runs Wikipedia. Mirror from https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/core. See https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_access for contributing.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:568 commits in 10 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Roan's contributions primarily revolve around ResourceLoader and its related files, indicating a focus on backend development and system maintenance. They worked on the implementation of features related to the parsing of .vue files, including allowing for single-file components. They also made corrections and improvements to the system's logic and its dependencies, involving changes to caching mechanisms and support for new features. Furthermore, they were involved in updating dependencies and ensuring compatibility within the existing codebase.
wikimediaphpwikipediacollaborative-editingruns
catrope/sf-rcv
May 2018 - Nov 2019
Contributions:78 commits, 41 pushes in 1 year 6 months
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