Who’s Julien Danjou?
For the past 25 years, I've been leaving my mark on the world of open-source software. Born and raised in France, I've been on a mission to create, innovate, and inspire. Although I've called Toulouse home since 2021, most of my journey took place in the vibrant city of Paris.
My passion for open source began at a young age when I became the youngest Debian developer in 2002. My contributions to the Debian distribution showcased my early talent and dedication. From there, I moved on to tackle new challenges, including working on GNU Emacs and mastering the art of Lisp programming. If you use Linux, you might have heard of the awesome window manager; I’m its creator.
But my true calling came when I discovered the power of Python in 2007. I dove headfirst into the OpenStack project in 2011, leading the telemetry projects and building a time series database called Gnocchi. My innovative work on the telemetry project at Red Hat, which I joined in 2014, pushed the boundaries of what was possible in the world of cloud computing.
As my expertise in Python grew, I decided to share my knowledge with the world. I wrote and self-published two books, "Serious Python" (2014 and 2019) and "Scaling Python," (2017), which became popular resources for Python developers looking to take their skills to the next level.
After the success of my books, I joined Datadog in 2019, where I was hired to build a Python profiler from scratch. This experience allowed me to delve deep into the internals of CPython, learn how to build products and gain valuable insights that would shape my future projects.
Since 2019, I have been the CEO and co-founder of Mergify, a SaaS tool company that is changing the way software engineering teams merge their code, manage their CI, and improve their developer experience. Helping others streamline their development process and foster seamless collaboration is incredibly rewarding.
Talking to our users led me to learn a tons of things about CI/CD, and in 2023 I launched Nom d’un Pipeline !, the first French podcast on CI/CD.
I finally started a way to fund engineers with money and advice via Byte Brigade. Byte Brigade is a community dedicated to investing in early-stage developer tools and SaaS companies.
When I'm not coding or running Mergify, you can find me in the kitchen, perfecting my Neapolitan pizza recipe or lighting my kamado to smoke some meat. And if I'm not cooking, I'm probably pushing myself to the limit in a half-marathon or dominating the leaderboards as a top 1% FPS player — I did achieve the rank of Master in Apex Legends and Global Elite in CS:GO!
Through it all, my passion for open source and innovation has never wavered. I have a wealth of experience and knowledge that I'm always eager to share with the community, and I do that by advising startups and participating in tech conferences.
So, if you're ever in Toulouse and smell the aroma of a smoky barbecue wafting through the air, there's a good chance you'll find me nearby, dreaming up my next big project in the world of open-source software.
If you want to hear more about my past, present, and future stories, subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives.
