Sam Reilly

Staff Engineer · Stripe

I build the boring parts of the internet.

Staff software engineer. Distributed systems, Postgres internals, observability. Currently at Stripe; previously at Datadog and Heroku.

Read my writingFind me on GitHub
Sam Reilly
TypeScriptGoPostgresTailwind
Sam Reilly

$ whoami

Eight years across early-stage startups and big-co teams. Comfortable from React all the way down to the database. I prefer fewer abstractions, faster builds, and code reviews that catch real things.

  • TypeScript · Go · Postgres · Tailwind
  • Past: Stripe, Vercel, two YC startups
  • Open to staff/principal roles or contract
8 yr
Shipping in production
14k+
GitHub stars (combined)
99.9%
Uptime on what I’ve built

Selected projects

Open source · Dev tools

A tracing library used by 4k+ teams

Distributed-tracing SDK with sub-ms overhead and pluggable exporters.

Stars
4k+
Overhead
<1ms
Coastline · Fintech

Rebuilt the API gateway at a Series B fintech

Cut p95 from 380ms to 90ms; halved infra cost in the process.

p95 latency
−76%
Cost
−50%

How I work

Understand

Get clear on the actual problem and the constraints.

Spike

Smallest end-to-end thing that proves the approach.

Harden

Tests, telemetry, and the edge cases the spike skipped.

Hand off

Docs and a runbook so the team can own it from day one.

Built with
GitHub
Vercel
AWS
GCP
Stripe
Sentry
Datadog
Linear
$ git praise

What former teammates say

“One of the few engineers I have worked with who can hold the full system in their head and still write code that reads like prose.”
P
Priya Kapoor
Engineering Manager · Stripe
“Shipped the entire payments rewrite while I was on parental leave. Came back to a system better than what we'd planned. Hire on sight.”
J
Jordan Reyes
Staff Engineer · Vercel
“The kind of teammate who makes a PR review feel like a tutorial. We're still using infrastructure they built three years ago.”
A
Alex Morgan
CTO · Coastline
$ ls ./writing

Selected writing & talks

A handful of essays and conference talks on what I think about most:

  • "Why your tracing library is slow" — GopherCon 2024
  • "Edge functions, plainly explained" — Next.js Conf 2023
  • "Postgres for engineers who keep avoiding it" — blog series, 12 parts

$ man --availability

Are you open to full-time roles?+

Selectively, yes. I am most interested in staff/principal IC roles at engineering-led companies. Open to remote-first or hybrid; not relocating.

Do you take contract work?+

Yes — usually 6-12 week engagements in dev tools, infra, or systems work. Day rate for senior+, monthly retainer for longer engagements.

What stacks are you most fluent in?+

TypeScript + Go + Postgres + Tailwind day-to-day. Comfortable in Rust + Python when the work calls for it. Less interested in heavy enterprise Java.

Will you fly out for an on-site?+

For a final round or kickoff, absolutely. For day-to-day work I am remote-first; the work is better when nobody is performing presence.

Do you mentor / advise?+

I take on a small number of advisory roles at early-stage startups (typically pre-Series A) for equity. Reach out with the company + the question.

Open source?+

A handful of my libraries are MIT-licensed and used in production at companies I have never heard of. Issues and PRs welcome; sponsorship via GitHub.

Got a problem worth talking about?

Best way to start is a paragraph about what you are building and where I might fit. I read everything and reply within two business days.

$ contactView CV (PDF)
open to: staff/principal IC · contract · advisory

Let's talk

Quickest way is the form, or you can email me directly.

  • sam@samreilly.dev