Simon Riggs is a veteran database engineer and leader with a 36-year career delivering enterprise IT solutions, often working hands-on with database internals. As a Postgres Fellow at EDB and a prolific contributor to the upstream PostgreSQL repository, he has driven core features like Hot Standby improvements, WAL record enhancements, concurrency fixes and performance optimizations. He combines strategic experience from international startups—including two IPOs and major M&A—with a public-facing role as a trainer, conference speaker and author who communicates complex technical topics clearly. Trained as an astrophysicist at UCL, he brings a rigorous, analytical approach to system design and debugging, and is known for pragmatic problem-solving and community-focused contribution.
16 years of coding experience
BSc (Hons), Astrophysics, BSc (Hons), Astrophysics at University College London
Mirror of the official PostgreSQL GIT repository. Note that this is just a *mirror* - we don't work with pull requests on github. To contribute, please see https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Submitting_a_Patch
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Database Engineer
Contributions:618 commits in 8 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Simon's commits primarily focused on enhancements and fixes to the PostgreSQL database system, specifically concerning the Hot Standby feature. The contributions involve the implementation of new WAL records for features such as page reuse and transaction handling, ensuring proper handling of various scenarios during replay. The user also addressed concurrency issues related to drop database operations and improved performance with changes like removing index scans. These changes were performed across multiple components including access control and table access methods, indicating a strong ability to modify and maintain the database system itself.
Contributions:52 commits, 36 pushes in 2 years 5 months
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