Russell Keith-magee
Principal Software Engineer Team Lead at BeeWare Project
Perth, Western Australia
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRussell Keith-magee is a Principal Software Engineer and team lead with over 20 years of experience building pragmatic, well-tested systems across server, client and mobile platforms. A founder of the BeeWare project and former Django core developer, he brings deep expertise in Python, C/C++ and Java, and has helped shape both the Django framework and CPython itself. He combines academic rigour (PhD in AI) with startup and product experience, shipping tooling that turns Python projects into native apps and improving packaging and platform support across iOS, macOS and Android. Known for championing test-driven design and elegant engineering, he repeatedly contributes to high-profile open source projects—from pip and libffi to Facebook’s Yoga—often tackling tricky cross-platform build and compatibility issues. Based in Perth, he blends practical constraints (physical, conceptual and financial) into cutting-edge technical solutions and isn’t afraid to shave a few yaks along the way.
20 years of coding experience
21 years of employment as a software developer
PhD, Artificial Intelligence, PhD, Artificial Intelligence at Curtin University
Stackoverflow
1,066reputation
191kreached
13answers
8questions
Github Skills (104)
restructuredtext10
python10
testing10
command-line-interface10
cookiecutter10
templater10
c1110
slideshow10
c1710
android-developer10
javas10
build-automation10
arm10
pip10
bootstra10
Programming languages (25)
Github contributions (5)
beeware/voc
Aug 2015 - May 2020
A transpiler that converts Python code into Java bytecode
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:10 releases, 1065 commits, 585 PRs in 4 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Russell's commits focus on adding features to the build process and expanding test coverage within the VOC project. They modified the build system to use ant build.xml for library builds, and they added code to ensure Java support libraries are compiled before test execution. Additionally, the user made multiple changes to improve the testing process including adding new tests, expanding the existing tests, and adapting output validation to reflect changes in the underlying codebase.
java-bytecodepythontranspiler
beeware/beeware
Jan 2018 - Jan 2023
A meta-package simplifying the installation of the BeeWare suite of tools
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:343 reviews, 172 commits, 399 PRs in 5 years
Contributions summary:Russell contributed to the development of a command-line interface for the BeeWare project, adding features for creating, building, and running BeeWare projects. They implemented the initial CLI structure, including argument parsing and subcommands. The user refactored the codebase, improving the user experience by making the CLI more forgiving to platform inputs and improved output formatting. Furthermore, the user also addressed a number of dependency and distribution related issues within the setup configuration.
beeware
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