Jessica Tess McKellar is an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

software developer Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, Computer programming, programming, software documentation, documenting, software testing, testing, and Software bugs, bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applic ...

, engineering manager, and author.

Education

McKellar attended the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

and studied

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

and

chemistry Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...

Work

McKellar was an early employee and engineering manager at

Ksplice Ksplice is an open-source extension of the Linux kernel that allows security patches to be applied to a running kernel without the need for reboots, avoiding downtimes and improving availability (a technique broadly referred to as dynamic softw ...

, which was acquired by

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in 2011. In 2012, she co-founded

Zulip Zulip is an open source chat and collaborative software created by Jeff Arnold, Waseem Daher, Jessica McKellar, and Tim Abbott in 2012. Today, it is one of the free and open source alternatives to Slack, with over 40,000 commits contributed by ...

, a chat software company. In 2014, the company was acquired by

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, U.S. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and Client (computing), client software. Dropb ...

. She has spoken at several conferences about outreach efforts to increase the diversity of

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

communities. From 2012 to 2014, she was a director of the

Python Software Foundation The Python Software Foundation (PSF) is an American nonprofit organization devoted to the Python programming language, launched on March 6, 2001. The mission of the foundation is to foster development of the Python community and is responsible for ...

. In 2013, McKellar won the

O'Reilly Open Source Award The O'Reilly Media, O'Reilly Open Source Award is presented to individuals for dedication, innovation, leadership and outstanding contribution to Open-source model, open source. From 2005 to 2009 the award was known as the Google–O'Reilly Media, ...

for her contributions to

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

. In 2016, she won the Women in Open Source Community Award, awarded by

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become ass ...

. She is a contributor to Twisted, a networking framework for Python. From 2014 to 2017, she was a Director of Engineering and the chief of staff to the VP of Engineering at

. McKellar was a senior technical advisor for 16 episodes of the HBO show ''Silicon Valley''.

Author

McKellar is the co-author of the book ''Twisted Network Programming Essentials, 2nd Edition'' (

O'Reilly Media O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is an American learning company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books, produces tech conferences, and provides an online learning platform. Its distinctive brand features a woodcut of an ...

- 2013).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McKellar, Jessica Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Place of birth missing (living people) Living people American women computer scientists American computer scientists 1987 births 21st-century American women