JavaScript experts, mentors, speakers

As a Principal Developer Advocate at MongoDB, Karen Huaulmé (pronounced “You-Old-Maid” - but with no d’s) develops and presents applications to help developers unleash their creativity across all aspects of data and technology. Leveraging her past experience as a Solutions Architect for some of MongoDB’s most demanding customers, Karen loves to trigger that “aha” moment in the minds of developers - when they recognize a better path to simplify, enhance, and accelerate their projects in ways they never thought possible. Prior to MongoDB, Karen spent most of her career working with video game developers as a Solutions Architect and Integration Engineer at Nvidia, Amazon and Twitch. In her free time, Karen embarrasses her 2 kids, spoils her dog, and feeds her addiction to adventure travel - not necessarily in that order.

Hadar is the co-founder and CTO of Myop, a developer-first platform transforming how UI and UX are built, controlled and optimized in production. Hadar brings over 15 years of hands-on development experience and a deep focus on frontend infrastructure. Over the past decade, he’s led engineering teams at some of Israel’s top tech companies. At Wix, Hadar served as an architect and then head of the frontend guild, managing over 700 developers and helping shape the company’s core frontend systems. Prior to that, he held senior R&D leadership roles at Jive Software and Rafael, driving large-scale frontend development across complex products. A Unit 8200 alum, Hadar brings not only technical depth but also a strong understanding of organizational scale, cross-team architecture, and how to evolve legacy systems. His experience spans both building systems from scratch and leading long-term frontend transformations in high-growth environments.

Senna is a Solutions Engineer at GitHub supporting our customers the EMEA MidMarket segment. She has a background in web application, iOS development, and accessibility. Originally working out of the HQ in San Francisco, she’s been working with GitHub customers for three years, passionate about empowering developers and helping organizations as they go through cultural and digital transformations.

Solutions engineer with a lot of operation experience in Couchbase.

Jorrik’s first lines of code were in the days jQuery ruled. That didn’t scare him. Now he has 6+ years of frontend experience using React and Vue during his day job. In the evening and night hours, a lot of fun projects and other libraries passed his ‘git clone’. When not coding he gets his fair share of laughs going to comedy shows.

Engineering Manager in UI Engineering at JP Morgan, Steve works with the core engineering teams creating open source developer tooling and an accessible React component library aimed at streamlining the life of development teams across the bank. Steve has working in JavaScript development focused roles since 2001 from ad agencies to fintech and IE6 through to evergreen Chrome, he is the author of several widely used open source libraries and describes his career as having been lucky enough to follow his hobby and his passion every day for over two decades.

Melanie loves being a software engineer. The infinite loop of bugs, puzzles and learning make of everyday a new adventure. Her specialty and the love of her life is Vue.js, but lately she has been adding Nuxt.js and Node.js to the party. When she is not working as a software engineer at Capgemini, she uses her web development skills to remove micro plastic in the waters of the world. Her goal in this life is to work towards a more sustainable way of life, meaning that her hobbies include sailing the world, documenting underwater micro-life, and picking up trash with podcasts blasting. She is always trying on many different hats: trainer, team lead, community builder, talker, organizer. But the hat that fits best is developer.

Principal Engineer and active open source contributor. From Minsk, but now based in London and work at DAZN. I like playing around with TS, React, Redux, MobX/MST, RxJS, WebGL, Serverless, Node, Functional Programming with a focus on performance, system architecture and team productivity.

James Swinton-Bland is DevRel Lead at AG Grid. He started out his career as a software engineer, before moving into Developer Advocacy. With a background in Android and Java, James now works primarily with React, helping developers get the most out of AG Grid and AG Charts.

Engineering Manager at Capital on Tap (UK fintech), leading Internal & Core Systems and the Engineering department’s AI adoption. Focused on moving AI from prototype to production with stage-gates, data-protection controls, and measurable impact. Integrating an AI function inside Engineering to ship customer-facing features.

Gokul is a software engineer and former startup cofounder with 10 years of experience building products across fintech, martech, consumer research, telecom, and logistics. He’s passionate about solving complex problems with simple, elegant solutions and mentoring aspiring engineers through programs at General Assembly and AcademyXI.

I am a Software Engineer at Figma, hailing from Leeds in the UK. I have always worked full stack but there is a special place in my heart for anything visual, which has lead me to my role on the Developer Tools team at Figma. What excites me about technology is being able to rapidly iterate on things and work with the smartest people around to build cool stuff! In my spare time I enjoy hanging out with my cat, oil painting and getting out into the countryside on my own two feet.

Shyam Swaroop is the maintainer and core developer of an open-source project, Atri engine - a new framework built on React. He is also the Co-Founder & CTO of Atri Labs - the company behind this project. He has worked as a software engineer in both academia and industry. His most recent engagement in academia was working with DARPA under the US Department of Defense as Graduate Research Assistant at Columbia University (USA). Previously, he has created software products that have yielded multi million dollars of revenue for his organization, EXL Services, a US-headquartered technology consulting firm. He studied Engineering from IIT, India and dropped out from graduate program in computer science at Columbia University, USA to work on his startup full-time.

Alex's skills as a project manager helped integrate athlete management tech into many UK universities such as Birmingham City University. He joined Toptal to add his expertise in agile methodologies and best practice leadership techniques to help complete innovative projects and add value to end users' products. As a PMI member, he is proficient at operating within a varied company structure from SMEs to enterprise organizations.

Oli is VP of NeuraLegion's developer focussed security testing platform, helping developers understand how they can run seamless, fast and accurate security tests on every build. Oli works closely with security and engineering teams globally to help them ship secure software more efficiently and is passionate about automation, CI/CD and DevOps / DevSecOps. Oli has spoken at many conferences internationally and is a regular at developer and security related events and meetups.

Sai Ekbote is a Software Engineer currently leading engineering for GraphQL at Solo.io. He has contributed to multiple open source projects such as Istio, Envoy and Flagger.

5+ years experience building React/ React Native applications. Currently a Front End Engineer part of the team responsible for Babbel's lesson trainers and interactions. Cofounder of the charity Little World.

Founder and Principal Advisor at Forthright (https://twitter.com/forthright_tech).

Brandon is a full stack engineer who finds enjoyment working with Kotlin. When not working, he frequently gets outside to snowboard or mountain bike. He also enjoys tinkering with smart home technology.

Tim Makin is a Software Engineering Manager at CDL with over 20 years of experience in driving innovation and delivering high-impact digital products. They currently lead 14 teams, guiding projects from conception to completion while fostering a culture of excellence. Before their current role, Tim spent six of those years as the founder of a digital agency, developing solutions for world-renowned organisations including the BBC, Tesco, IKEA, and Sage.

Co-Founder, CTO & Security Researcher at NeuraLegion. Developer and security researcher, I love playing with Neural networks and other ML tools. I'm interested in new programming languages and the potential they bring.

I’m Harsh Maheshwari, a Principal Engineer at Optum, UnitedHealth Group. I hold a Master’s in Computer Science and specialize in applied search technology, focusing on Full Stack AI/ML application. I’ve filed patents in this area and have previously created similar solutions for the fintech industry. My work revolves around advancing search methodologies and pioneering innovative frontend development.

As CTO and Co-Founder, Connell oversees Zapworks (Zappar’s AR, VR & WebXR platform) as well as being responsible for all cloud infrastructure. Connell founded Zappar in 2011, alongside Dr. Simon Taylor, Caspar Thykier and Kirk Ewing and is one of the world's leading XR Platforms and creative studios. More recently, Connell and the team launched Zapvision, an app and SDK that's helping people who are blind or have low vision to access product information on packaging through a single Accessible QR code.

Hello, my name is Shivakant Shukla, and I am a MERN stack developer with four years of experience in creating dynamic and user-friendly web applications. My passion for technology, coupled with a strong foundation in front-end development, has been the driving force behind my career. In the realm of Front-end development, I excel in crafting interactive and responsive user interfaces using technologies such as React, Redux, JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3. I take pride in my ability to transform design concepts into functional, pixel-perfect websites that provide exceptional user experiences. Whether it's optimising performance, ensuring cross-browser compatibility, or enhancing accessibility, I am committed to delivering high-quality front-end solutions. While my primary expertise lies in front-end development, I have had the opportunity to work with back-end technologies like Node.js, Express.js, Nest.js, and MongoDB.