Luke Oliff
Developer Experience

Copyright © 2024 Luke Oliff. All rights reserved.

Present
Deepgram Logo

Developer Experience Engineer Deepgram

I've been centre to shaping the Developer Experience team's strategy and initiatives over the past few years. My role involves close collaboration with the Product, Engineering, and Digital Marketing teams to ensure a cohesive and effective approach.

A significant part of my work is focused on defining and building our developer community. This includes hands-on engineering and maintenance of our open-source packages, as well as setting the strategic direction for our open-source programme. Additionally, I coach other team members in Developer Relations, Advocacy, and Developer Experience engineering, helping to elevate our collective impact.

Achievements

  • Build visually stunning demos including a YouTube Transcription tool, and a new open source Deepgram AI Voice Agent that I named after my daughter.
  • Ideated and delivered our matrix/library of open source demos covering multiple use-cases across many languages.
  • Build our very first CLI tool, which as well as usual API-access features, also allowed customers to select a use-case and programming language to set up one of our open source demos with a single CLI command.
  • Launched our Developer Commuity on Discord and GitHub discussions, now home to over 2000 customers and members.
  • Re-architected our SDKs to improve developer experience by having them reflect our product closely, and make it easier for us to support more products.
  • Delivered internal tooling such as community management tools and our very own Slack-driven URL shortener, with a focus on easy access to all team members.
Netlify Logo

Engineering Manager Netlify

This was a player-coach role, managing a team of Principal and Senior Developer Experience engineers. Our focus is on developing and maintaining open-source plugins that enable Netlify to function in a highly-optimized manner across all frameworks and architectures.

Achievements

  • Managing a small team with a mix of highly skilled engineers and new hires.
  • Launched Gatsby plugins for Netlify
  • Launched Next plugins for Netlify
Vonage Logo

Developer Advocate Vonage

As a Developer Advocate, I joined the Developer Relations team to create and syndicate technical content. I architected, built, and launched a new Developer Education platform along with internal tools (such as Slack bots) and syndication tools to automate content sharing. I enabled team contributions through comprehensive documentation and tools. I worked on the JavaScript Client SDK, integrating Vonage API features with real-time services via WebSocket connections. I also created content, documentation, and demos for real-time features, focusing on the security implications of client-side connections to public APIs.

Achievements

  • Successfully launched a new Developer Education platform.
  • Developed internal tools to streamline workflows and improve team productivity.
  • Automated content sharing and syndication, increasing reach and efficiency.
  • Created comprehensive documentation and tools to enable team contributions to the content platform.
  • Integrated Vonage API features with real-time services using WebSocket connections.
  • Authored content, documentation, and demos showcasing real-time features and best practices.
  • Addressed security concerns related to client-side connections to public APIs, ensuring robust and secure implementations.
Auth0 Logo

Technical Writer Auth0 by Okta

Trend content creation. We monitored technology trends, and quickly learned and created content around these trends while using Auth0 products. This required a polyglot approach to engineering, fast learning, community assimilation, and ability to discover and follow the best-practices of a new engineering community.

Achievements

  • Consistently identified and monitored emerging technology trends to stay ahead of industry developments.
  • Rapidly learned and created content around new trends, showcasing the integration of Auth0 products.
  • Demonstrated a polyglot approach to engineering, adapting quickly to various programming languages and frameworks.
  • Effectively assimilated into new engineering communities, understanding and leveraging their best practices.
  • Produced high-quality, trend-relevant content that engaged and educated the developer community.
  • Enhanced Auth0's visibility and relevance by aligning content with the latest technological advancements.
PurpleBricks

Senior Developer HouseSimple (now PurpleBricks)

Platform engineering and technical leadership as part of a small team centered around API development and integration, with my role focused on large scale projects.

Achievements

  • Led platform engineering and technical leadership efforts for API development and integration.
  • Delivered large-scale projects, including greenfield initiatives like house price estimate automation tooling.
  • Architected API solutions for a new standalone frontend, ensuring robust and scalable design.
  • Developed a new platform on AWS, utilizing scripted infrastructure with Terraform for efficient deployment.
  • Created a new referral system, enhancing customer acquisition and engagement.
  • Integrated APIs from multiple vendors, including rightmove.com and zoopla.co.uk, to enrich platform capabilities.
  • Built a feedback system in collaboration with NetPromoter and TrustPilot to gather and analyze user feedback.
OnHotels.com

Head of Development Onhotels.com (closed)

Led a small team of engineers building new aggregated APIs that served millions of searches to dozens of suppliers every day.

Achievements

  • Helped resolve PCI DSS audit compliance issues by implementing new features and bug fixes.
  • Led a small team of engineers to build new aggregated APIs, handling millions of daily searches from dozens of suppliers.
  • Designed a new architecture, improving search aggregation speed by 10x on the worst performing searches (20s down to 1s).
  • Ensured ISO and PCI DSS compliance, maintaining high standards of security and data protection.
  • Designed and implemented a caching system using Redis to deliver immediate results for common and recent searches.
  • Stored room rates per day to provide faster price estimates for longer searches during peak loads on upstream APIs.