---
title: "Django team"
version: 1.10
locale: en
source: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/internals/team/
canonical: https://djangodocs.dev/en/1.10/internals/team/
---
# Django team

## The original team

Django originally started at World Online, the Web department of the [Lawrence
Journal-World](http://ljworld.com/) of Lawrence, Kansas, USA.

**[Adrian Holovaty](http://holovaty.com/)**

  Adrian is a Web developer with a background in journalism. He’s known in
  journalism circles as one of the pioneers of “journalism via computer
  programming”, and in technical circles as “the guy who invented Django.”

  He was lead developer at World Online for 2.5 years, during which time
  Django was developed and implemented on World Online’s sites. He was the
  leader and founder of [EveryBlock](https://everyblock.com/), a “news feed for your block.” He now
  develops [Soundslice](https://www.soundslice.com/).

  Adrian lives in Chicago, USA.

**[Simon Willison](http://simonwillison.net/)**

  Simon is a well-respected Web developer from England. He had a one-year
  internship at World Online, during which time he and Adrian developed Django
  from scratch. The most enthusiastic Brit you’ll ever meet, he’s passionate
  about best practices in Web development and maintains a well-read
  [web-development blog](http://simonwillison.net/).

  Simon lives in Brighton, England.

**[Jacob Kaplan-Moss](https://jacobian.org/)**

  Jacob is Director of Platform Security at [Heroku](https://heroku.com/). He worked at World
  Online for four years, where he helped open source Django and found
  the Django Software Foundation. Jacob lives on a hobby farm outside of
  Lawrence where he spends his weekends playing with dirt and power tools.

**[Wilson Miner](http://wilsonminer.com/)**

  Wilson’s design-fu is what makes Django look so nice. He created the design
  that was used for nearly the first ten years on the Django Project website,
  as well as the current design for Django’s acclaimed admin interface. Wilson
  was the designer for EveryBlock and [Rdio](http://rdio.com). He now designs for Facebook.

  Wilson lives in San Francisco, USA.

## The current team

These are the folks who have a long history of contributions, a solid track
record of being helpful on the mailing lists, and a proven desire to dedicate
serious time to Django. In return, they’ve been invited to join the [core
team](/en/1.10/internals/organization/#core-team).

**[Luke Plant](http://lukeplant.me.uk/)**

  At University Luke studied physics and Materials Science and also
  met [Michael Meeks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Meeks_(software)) who introduced him to Linux and Open Source,
  re-igniting an interest in programming.  Since then he has
  contributed to a number of Open Source projects and worked
  professionally as a developer.

  Luke has contributed many excellent improvements to Django,
  including database-level improvements, the CSRF middleware and
  many unit tests.

  Luke currently works for a church in Bradford, UK, and part-time
  as a freelance developer.

**[Russell Keith-Magee](http://cecinestpasun.com/)**

  Russell studied physics as an undergraduate, and studied neural networks for
  his PhD. His first job was with a startup in the defense industry developing
  simulation frameworks. Over time, mostly through work with Django, he’s
  become more involved in Web development.

  Russell has helped with several major aspects of Django, including a
  couple major internal refactorings, creation of the test system, and more.

  Russell lives in the most isolated capital city in the world — Perth,
  Australia.

**[James Bennett](http://b-list.org/)**

  James has been one of Django’s release managers, and also
  contributes to the documentation and provide the occasional
  bugfix.

  James came to Web development from philosophy when he discovered
  that programmers get to argue just as much while collecting much
  better pay. He lives in San Mateo, California and previously
  worked at World Online and Mozilla; currently, he’s part of the
  Web engineering team at [Clover](https://www.cloverhealth.com/).

  He [keeps a blog](http://b-list.org/), and enjoys fine port and talking to his car.

**Justin Bronn**

  Justin Bronn is a computer scientist and attorney specializing
  in legal topics related to intellectual property and spatial law.

  In 2007, Justin began developing `django.contrib.gis` in a branch,
  a.k.a. [GeoDjango](http://geodjango.org/), which was merged in time for Django 1.0.  While
  implementing GeoDjango, Justin obtained a deep knowledge of Django’s
  internals including the ORM, the admin, and Oracle support.

  Justin lives in Houston, TX.

**Karen Tracey**

  Karen has a background in distributed operating systems (graduate school),
  communications software (industry) and crossword puzzle construction
  (freelance).  The last of these brought her to Django, in late 2006, when
  she set out to put a Web front-end on her crossword puzzle database.
  That done, she stuck around in the community answering questions, debugging
  problems, etc. – because coding puzzles are as much fun as word puzzles.

  Karen lives in Apex, NC, USA.

**[Jannis Leidel](https://jezdez.com/)**

  Jannis graduated in media design from [Bauhaus-University Weimar](http://www.uni-weimar.de/),
  is the author of a number of pluggable Django apps and likes to
  contribute to Open Source projects like [virtualenv](https://virtualenv.pypa.io/) and [pip](https://pip.pypa.io/).

  He has worked on Django’s auth, admin and staticfiles apps as well as
  the form, core, internationalization and test systems. He currently works
  at [Mozilla](https://www.mozilla.org/).

  Jannis lives in Berlin, Germany.

**[Andrew Godwin](https://www.aeracode.org/)**

  Andrew is a freelance Python developer and tinkerer, and has been
  developing against Django since 2007. He graduated from Oxford University
  with a degree in Computer Science, and has become most well known
  in the Django community for his work on South, the schema migrations
  library.

  Andrew lives in San Francisco, CA, USA.

**[Carl Meyer](http://www.oddbird.net/)**

  Carl has been a Django user since 2007 (long enough to remember
  queryset-refactor, but not magic-removal), and builds web apps at [OddBird](http://www.oddbird.net/).
  He became a Django contributor by accident, because fixing bugs is more
  interesting than working around them.

  Carl lives in Rapid City, SD, USA.

**Ramiro Morales**

  Ramiro has been reading Django source code and submitting patches since
  mid-2006 after researching for a Python Web tool with matching awesomeness
  and being pointed to it by an old ninja.

  A software developer in the electronic transactions industry, he is a
  living proof of the fact that anyone with enough enthusiasm can contribute
  to Django, learning a lot and having fun in the process.

  Ramiro lives in Córdoba, Argentina.

**[Chris Beaven](http://smileychris.com/)**

  Chris has been submitting patches and suggesting crazy ideas for Django
  since early 2006. An advocate for community involvement and a long-term
  triager, he is still often found answering questions in the #django IRC
  channel.

  Chris lives in Napier, New Zealand (adding to the pool of Oceanic core
  developers). He works remotely as a developer for [Lincoln Loop](https://lincolnloop.com/).

**Honza Král**

  Honza first discovered Django in 2006 and started using it right away,
  first for school and personal projects and later in his full-time job. He
  contributed various patches and fixes mostly to the newforms library,
  newforms admin and, through participation in the Google Summer of Code
  project, assisted in creating the [model validation](/en/1.10/ref/models/instances/#validating-objects) functionality.

  He is currently working for [Whiskey Media](http://www.whiskeymedia.com/) in San Francisco developing
  awesome sites running on pure Django.

**Tim Graham**

  When exploring Web frameworks for an independent study project in the fall
  of 2008, Tim discovered Django and was lured to it by the documentation.
  He enjoys contributing to the docs because they’re awesome.

  Tim works as a software engineer and lives in Philadelphia, PA, USA.

**Paul McMillan**

  Paul found Django in 2008 while looking for a more
  structured approach to web programming. He stuck around after
  figuring out that the developers of Django had already invented
  many of the wheels he needed. His passion for breaking (and then
  fixing) things led to his current role working to maintain and
  improve the security of Django.

**[Julien Phalip](http://julienphalip.com)**

  Julien has a background in software engineering and human-computer
  interaction. As a Web developer, he enjoys tinkering with the backend as
  much as designing and coding user interfaces. Julien discovered Django in
  2007 while doing his PhD in Computing Sciences. Since then he has
  contributed patches to various components of the framework, in particular
  the admin. Julien was a co-founder of the [Interaction Consortium](http://interaction.net.au). He
  now works at [Odopod](http://odopod.com), a digital agency based in San Francisco, CA, USA.

**[Aymeric Augustin](https://myks.org/)**

  Aymeric is an engineer with a background in mathematics and computer
  science. He chose Django because he believes that software should be simple,
  explicit and tested. His perfectionist tendencies quickly led him to triage
  tickets and contribute patches.

  Aymeric has a pragmatic approach to software engineering, can’t live without
  a continuous integration server, and likes proving that Django is a good
  choice for enterprise software.

**[Claude Paroz](http://www.2xlibre.net)**

  Claude is a former teacher who fell in love with free software at the
  beginning of the 21st century. He’s now working as freelancer in Web
  development in his native Switzerland. He has found in Django a perfect
  match for his needs of a stable, clean, documented and well-maintained Web
  framework.

  He’s also helping the GNOME Translation Project as maintainer of the
  Django-based [l10n.gnome.org](https://l10n.gnome.org).

**Anssi Kääriäinen**

  Anssi works as a developer at Finnish National Institute for Health and
  Welfare. He is also a computer science student at Aalto University. In his
  work he uses Django for developing internal business applications and sees
  Django as a great match for that use case.

  Anssi is interested in developing the object relational mapper (ORM) and
  all related features. He’s also a fan of benchmarking and he tries keep
  Django as fast as possible.

**Florian Apolloner**

  Florian is currently studying Physics at the [Graz University of Technology](http://tugraz.at/).
  Soon after he started using Django he joined the [Ubuntuusers webteam](https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/ubuntuusers/Webteam) to
  work on *Inyoka*, the software powering the whole Ubuntuusers site.

  For the time being he lives in Graz, Austria (not Australia ;)).

**Jeremy Dunck**

  Jeremy was rescued from corporate IT drudgery by Free Software and, in part,
  Django.  Many of Jeremy’s interests center around access to information.

  Jeremy was the lead developer of Pegasus News, one of the first uses of
  Django outside World Online, and has since joined Votizen, a startup intent
  on reducing the influence of money in politics.

  He serves as DSF Secretary, organizes and helps organize sprints, cares
  about the health and equity of the Django community.  He has gone an
  embarrassingly long time without a working blog.

  Jeremy lives in Mountain View, CA, USA.

**[Bryan Veloso](http://avalonstar.com/)**

  Bryan found Django 0.96 through a fellow designer who was evangelizing
  its use. It was his first foray outside of the land that was PHP-based
  templating. Although he has only ever used Django for personal projects,
  it is the very reason he considers himself a designer/developer
  hybrid and is working to further design within the Django community.

  Bryan works as a designer at GitHub by day, and masquerades as a [vlogger](https://youtube.com/bryanveloso/)
  and [shoutcaster](http://twitch.tv/vlogalonstar/) in the after-hours. Bryan lives in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

**[Simon Charette](https://github.com/charettes)**

  Simon is a mathematics student who discovered Django while searching for a
  replacement framework to an in-house PHP entity. Since that faithful day
  Django has been a big part of his life. So far, he’s been involved in some
  ORM and forms API fixes.

  Apart from contributing to multiple open source projects he spends most of
  his spare-time playing [Ultimate Frisbee](http://www.montrealultimate.ca) and working part-time
  at this awesome place called [Reptiletech](https://www.reptiletech.com).

  Simon lives in Montréal, Québec, Canada.

**Donald Stufft**

  Donald found Python and Django in 2007 while trying to find a language,
  and web framework that he really enjoyed using after many years of PHP. He
  fell in love with the beauty of Python and the way Django made tasks simple
  and easy. His contributions to Django focus primarily on ensuring that it
  is and remains a secure web framework.

  Donald currently works at [Nebula Inc](https://www.nebula.com/) as a Software Engineer for their
  security team and lives in the Greater Philadelphia Area.

**Marc Tamlyn**

  Marc started life on the web using Django 1.2 back in 2010, and has never
  looked back. He was involved with rewriting the class-based view
  documentation at DjangoCon EU 2012, and also helped to develop [CCBV](https://ccbv.co.uk/), an
  additional class-based view reference tool.

  Marc is currently a full-time parent, part-time developer, and lives in
  Oxford, UK.

**Shai Berger**

  Shai started working with Python back in 1998, and with Django just
  before 1.0. He is a Free Software enthusiast, but life happens, and
  he was driven by consulting gigs to contribute to the Oracle and
  SQL Server backends of South, and then the Oracle backend of Django
  itself. Finally, he joined core to help maintain the Oracle backend.

  Shai works for [Platonix](http://tech.platonix.com), a small consulting company he started
  with a few friends in 1996, and lives near Tel Aviv, Israel.

**Baptiste Mispelon**

  Baptiste discovered Django around the 1.2 version and promptly switched away
  from his homegrown PHP framework. He started getting more involved in the
  project after attending DjangoCon EU 2012, mostly by triaging tickets and
  submitting small patches.

  Baptiste currently lives in Budapest, Hungary and works for [M2BPO](https://www.m2bpo.fr),
  a small French company providing services to architects.

**Daniele Procida**

  Daniele unexpectedly became a Django developer on 29th April 2009. Since
  then he has relied daily on Django’s documentation, which has been a
  constant companion to him. More recently he has been able to contribute
  back to the project by helping improve the documentation itself.

  He is the author of [Arkestra](http://arkestra-project.org/) and [Don’t be afraid to commit](https://dont-be-afraid-to-commit.readthedocs.io). He lives
  in Cardiff, Wales, and works for [Divio](https://divio.ch/).

**[Erik Romijn](http://erik.io/)**

  Erik started using Django in the days of 1.2. His largest contribution to Django was
  `GenericIPAddressField`, and he has worked on all sorts of patches since.
  While developing with Django, he always keeps a little list of even the slightest
  Django frustrations, to tackle them at a later time and prevent other developers
  from having to deal with the same issues.

  Erik is an independent app maker, mostly developing web and mobile apps, as
  [Solid Links](https://solidlinks.nl/). He also enjoys helping ordinary developers to build safer web apps,
  for which Django is already a great start, and developed [Erik’s Pony Checkup](https://ponycheckup.com/) with
  that goal in mind. Erik lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

**[Loïc Bistuer](https://github.com/loic)**

  Loïc studied telecommunications engineering and works as an independent
  software developer and consultant.

  He discovered Django in 2008 shortly before the 1.0 release and has been
  hooked ever since. He contributes mostly to Django’s ORM and Form
  components. His main contributions include advanced query prefetching,
  streamlining QuerySet and Manager to improve query reusability, and a
  significant refactor of forms error handling.

  Loïc is originally from the South of France and currently lives in
  Bangkok, Thailand.

**[Michael Manfre](http://manfre.net)**

  Michael started running Django on Windows against a Microsoft SQL Server
  (MSSQL) database in 2008. He quickly became the maintainer of the
  `django-mssql` database backend. Much of his involvement with Django
  relates to the ORM, the private 3rd party database API, and using Django on
  Windows.

  Michael lives in Cary, NC, USA.

**[Collin Anderson](https://github.com/collinanderson)**

  Collin found Django in November 2006. He was in awe of the admin and ORM
  and was amazed that the documentation was teaching him best web practices
  like redirecting after a successful POST request. Why had he never learned
  this before? No one knows to this day.

  He enjoys helping people on the [django-users](/en/1.10/internals/mailing-lists/#django-users-mailing-list) mailing list and making
  Django simple and easy for newcomers.

  Collin lives in South Bend, IN, USA where he uses Django to [increase
  unity](http://onetencommunications.com/about/).

**[Tom Christie](https://twitter.com/_tomchristie)**

  Tom has background in speech recognition, networking, and web development.
  He has a particular interest in Web API design and is the original author
  of [Django REST framework](http://django-rest-framework.org).

  Tom lives in the seaside city of Brighton, UK.

**[Curtis Maloney](http://musings.tinbrain.net/blog/)**

  Curtis is a self-taught programmer from Melbourne, Australia, who eschews
  specialization.  Upon finding Django when it was first open sourced, he
  realized it was possible to enjoy web development.

  He spends a lot of time helping people on the #django IRC channel, and
  has authored and released a number of [smaller Django apps](https://github.com/funkybob/).

**[Markus Holtermann](https://github.com/MarkusH)**

  Markus is a senior backend developer at [LaterPay](https://www.laterpay.net/) in Munich. He studied
  Computer Science at the [Technical University of Berlin](http://www.tu-berlin.de/). He started
  working with Django in 2010 when he joined the [ubuntuusers.de](https://ubuntuusers.de/) web team
  to work on *Inyoka*. Markus made his first contribution to the Django
  project during DjangoCon Europe 2013 in Warsaw. He was the web team leader
  for the [EuroPython 2014 website](https://ep2014.europython.eu/) and started regular contributions to
  Django after that.

  Markus lives in Berlin, Germany.

**[Josh Smeaton](https://github.com/jarshwah)**

  Josh was given the opportunity to work on a new Django app around version
  1.1 after working with a homegrown PHP reporting framework. The simplicity
  of the ORM and the power of the Admin were extremely liberating.

  Still being involved with custom reporting applications, he decided to try
  his hand at improving the ORM support for analytics. His contributions
  focus on giving more power to users of the ORM.

  Josh lives in Melbourne, Australia where he heads up development for a SaaS
  telecommunications company.

**[Preston Timmons](https://github.com/prestontimmons)**

  Preston is a software developer with a background in mathematics. He enjoys
  Django because it enables consistent, simple, and tested systems to be
  built that even new programmers can quickly dive into. Preston lives in
  Dallas, TX.

**[Tomek Paczkowski](https://hauru.eu)**

  Tomek started using Django in 2007 as a tool for quickly dealing with
  university projects. Since then, he worked with various technologies
  like Ruby on Rails, JavaScript and Android but always returned to
  Python and Django.

  Tomek loves the Django community. He organized multiple Django
  sprints, co-organized [DjangoCon Europe 2013](http://love.djangocircus.com) and has mentored at many
  [Django Girls](https://djangogirls.org) events.

  Originally from Poland, Tomek currently lives in London, where he
  works at [Squirrel](https://squirrel.me).

**[Ola Sitarska](http://ola.sitarska.com/)**

  Ola started working with Django in 2009, when she discovered the power of
  the Django admin and quickly fell in love with the beauty of Python.

  She co-organized [DjangoCon Europe 2013](http://love.djangocircus.com) in Warsaw and co-authored the
  [Django Girls Tutorial](http://tutorial.djangogirls.org), the most beginner friendly Django tutorial out
  there. Together with Ola Sendecka, she started [Django Girls](https://djangogirls.org), a community
  and series of Django workshops for women who’ve never programmed before.

  In 2015, she became a Django Software Foundation board member. Ola was also
  a part of the team responsible for shipping the djangoproject.com redesign.

  Originally from Poland, Ola currently lives in London, where she
  works with friends at [Potato](https://p.ota.to).

**[Ola Sendecka](https://twitter.com/asendecka)**

  Ola started her adventure with Django when writing a university project in
  \2009. After that she attended her first DjangoCon Europe which
  defined her future life as a Django professional.

  Since then she has been an active community member. Ola co-organized a number of
  Django sprints and conferences including:
  [DjangoCon Europe 2013](http://love.djangocircus.com), [Django Under the Hood 2015](http://www.djangounderthehood.com/) and
  [DjangoCon Europe 2016](http://2016.djangocon.eu). Together with Ola Sitarska she founded
  [Django Girls](https://djangogirls.org), co-authored the [Django Girls Tutorial](http://tutorial.djangogirls.org) and
  is a member of the Django Girls Foundation. She is also an author of
  the [Coding is for Girls](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0hNd2uW8jTR5K3KBzRuG2A) YouTube series teaching programming and Django
  to beginners.

  Originally from Poland, Ola currently lives in London, where she works for [Potato](https://p.ota.to).

## Past team members

**Georg “Hugo” Bauer**

  Georg created Django’s internationalization system, managed i18n
  contributions and made a ton of excellent tweaks, feature additions and bug
  fixes.

**Robert Wittams**

  Robert was responsible for the *first* refactoring of Django’s admin
  application to allow for easier reuse and has made a ton of
  excellent tweaks, feature additions and bug fixes.

**[Alex Gaynor](https://alexgaynor.net)**

  Alex was involved in many parts of Django, he contributed to the ORM,
  forms, admin, amongst others; he is most known for his work on
  multiple-database support in Django.

  Alex lives in Washington, DC, USA.

**[Simon Meers](http://simonmeers.com/)**

  Simon discovered Django 0.96 during his Computer Science PhD research and
  has been developing with it full-time ever since. His core code
  contributions are mostly in Django’s admin application.

  Simon works as a freelance developer based in Wollongong, Australia.

**[Gabriel Hurley](http://strikeawe.com/)**

  Gabriel has been working with Django since 2008, shortly after the 1.0
  release. Convinced by his business partner that Python and Django were the
  right direction for the company, he couldn’t have been more happy with the
  decision. His contributions range across many areas in Django, but years of
  copy-editing and an eye for detail lead him to be particularly at home
  while working on Django’s documentation.

  Gabriel works as a developer in the SF Bay Area, CA, USA.

**Malcolm Tredinnick**

  Malcolm originally wanted to be a mathematician and somehow ended up a
  software developer. He contributed to many Open Source projects, served on
  the board of the GNOME foundation, and was a great chess player.

  Malcolm was deeply involved in many part of Django - most notably, the
  ORM, but many other internals bear his fingerprints. Django’s support for
  unicode and autoescaping in templates can both be almost entirely
  attributed to Malcolm.

  He was an International Man of Mystery and lived in Sydney, Australia.

  *Malcolm passed away on March 17, 2013.*

**[Preston Holmes](http://www.ptone.com/)**

  Preston is a recovering neuroscientist who originally discovered Django as
  part of a sweeping move to Python from a grab bag of half a dozen
  languages. He was drawn to Django’s balance of practical batteries included
  philosophy, care and thought in code design, and strong open source
  community. Currently working in the rent-your-infra space (aka Cloud), he
  is always looking for opportunities to volunteer for community oriented
  education projects, such as for kids and scientists (e.g. Software
  Carpentry).

  Preston lives with his family and animal menagerie in Santa Barbara, CA, USA.

**[Idan Gazit](http://gazit.me)**

  As a self-professed design geek, Idan was initially attracted to Django
  sometime between magic-removal and queryset-refactor. Formally trained
  as a software engineer, Idan straddles the worlds of design and code,
  jack of two trades and master of none. He is passionate about usability
  and finding novel ways to extract meaning from data, and is a longtime
  [photographer](https://flickr.com/photos/idangazit).

  Idan is currently hacking on all things data and visualization at [Heroku](https://heroku.com/).

**Matt Boersma**

  Matt helped with Django’s Oracle support.

**Ian Kelly**

  Ian also helped with Oracle support.

**Joseph Kocherhans**

  Joseph was the director of lead development at EveryBlock and previously
  developed at the Lawrence Journal-World. He often disappears for several
  days into the woods, attempts to teach himself computational linguistics,
  and annoys his neighbors with his [Charango](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charango) playing.

  Joseph’s first contribution to Django was a series of improvements to the
  authorization system leading up to support for pluggable authorization.
  Since then, he’s worked on the new forms system, its use in the admin, and
  many other smaller improvements.

  Joseph lives in Chicago, USA.

**[Gary Wilson](http://thegarywilson.com/)**

  Gary starting contributing patches to Django in 2006 while developing Web
  applications for [The University of Texas](https://www.utexas.edu/) (UT).  Since, he has made
  contributions to the email and forms systems, as well as many other
  improvements and code cleanups throughout the code base.

  Gary lives in Austin, Texas, USA.

**[Brian Rosner](http://brosner.com/)**

  Brian enjoys learning more about programming languages and system
  architectures and contributing to open source projects.

  He helped immensely in getting Django’s “newforms-admin” branch finished
  in time for Django 1.0.

  Brian lives in Denver, Colorado, USA.

**[James Tauber](http://jtauber.com/)**

  James is the lead developer of [Pinax](http://pinaxproject.com/) and the CEO and founder of
  [Eldarion](http://eldarion.com/). He has been doing open source software since 1993, Python
  since 1998 and Django since 2006. He serves on the board of the Python
  Software Foundation and is currently on a leave of absence from a PhD in
  linguistics.

  James currently lives in Boston, MA, USA but originally hails from
  Perth, Western Australia where he attended the same high school as
  Russell Keith-Magee.