Tom Parker-shemilt
Staff Engineer at Trace Machina
London, England, United Kingdom
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolTom Parker-shemilt is a Staff Engineer with 26 years of polyglot experience spanning embedded systems research through high-performance web and cloud platforms, currently building async-heavy, performance-sensitive Rust systems at a London startup. He blends deep academic roots in distributed sensor networks and low-level systems with hands-on delivery of cloud-native tooling (Bazel/Nix/Bazel BEP, Kubernetes, Pulumi) and developer-facing optimizations for large builds. Tom has led cross-functional projects in Python, Rust and Go, driven zero-downtime migrations and platform standardisation efforts, and mentors engineers while remaining very client-facing on complex integrations. An active open-source contributor, his work touches notable Rust projects (rust-lang/libc, error-chain) and practical tooling across ecosystems, reflecting a taste for technically interesting problems rather than CRUD work. He’s based in London, prefers permanent remote/UK-timezone roles, and has a PhD in Wireless Sensor Networks—so expect systems thinking, careful testing for long-running issues, and a clear stance on what opportunities are worth his time.
26 years of coding experience
17 years of employment as a software developer
PhD Wireless Sensor Networks, PhD Wireless Sensor Networks at Delft University of TechnologyBSc Computer Science, BSc Computer Science at University of Bristol
Stackoverflow
1,687reputation
140kreached
36answers
1question
Github Skills (66)
datetime10
package-management10
python10
testing10
databases10
http10
bash10
c1110
winapi10
c1710
javas10
chef-client10
backend10
concurrency10
django10
Programming languages (28)
Github contributions (5)
rust-unofficial/awesome-rust
Jan 2020 - Jan 2023
A curated list of Rust code and resources.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:106 reviews, 833 commits, 977 PRs in 3 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Tom primarily focused on building a URL checker tool using Rust. Their work involved creating the initial structure, implementing URL checking logic, handling HTTP requests, and managing potential errors. They implemented mechanisms to manage file handles, limit the number of concurrent requests and retry failed requests. Moreover, they introduced a fix for a specific case related to GitHub actions, and they added a timeout for the requests.
rustrust-lang
jazzband/dj-database-url
Jun 2021 - Dec 2022
Use Database URLs in your Django Application.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:12 reviews, 7 commits, 47 PRs in 1 year 7 months
Contributions summary:Tom primarily contributed to enhancing database support within the Django application. They added support for CockroachDB, including schema configuration and testing, and improved error handling related to database URL parsing. Additionally, they added type hints for better code maintainability and readability and updated the documentation to reflect the new database support. Finally, the user refactored the code to improve code quality and coverage.
urlspythondjangodatabasedjango-application
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