Time for a change… Moving from JetBrains to Duende Software

At the start of 2025, I will be joining Duende Software to help drive customer success and advocate for IdentityServer and other tools and frameworks built by the company.

For close to 12 years, I have been working at JetBrains as a Developer Advocate. Mainly for .NET, but also for other fantastic developer tools. In recent years, I have grown to lead the .NET Advocacy team, and later head the whole Developer Advocacy team at JetBrains.

When I (re-)joined JetBrains back in 2016, it was the time JetBrains Rider was just released. With a small team of passionate developers, marketing, developer advocates (and more, I’m simplifying), we managed to launch a cross-platform competitor to Visual Studio. A journey that I have been a part of ever since, with the most recent “big thing” being the Rider free for non-commercial license change. Rider also is special to me as its initial team has moved on into the rest of JetBrains, pushing other tools forward.

Also a big shout out to the ReSharper folks at JetBrains! It’s also thanks to you that Rider became what it is today, and that several other tools became possible.

I’m grateful that I got to announce JetBrains Space live on stage in front of thousands of developers, together with the CEO back then (Max Shafirov). The energy of that audience was fantastic, and I recall forgetting to switch my screen in the first few seconds of the product demo and that audience being very supportive in pointing this out. Massive good vibes that I still remember to this day.

Another highlight was the “let’s do something nice” e-book Khalid and I did a while ago: C# for Babies. A fun thing to do, that a lot of folks appreciated as a nice gift when we started printing it. Khalid and I also clicked very well, and were often considered “two brothers from another mother”, as the saying goes. Going to miss you friend!

There are too many people I want to say thank you to for experiences in recent years. There are a few folks I’d like to call out though:

Hadi, thank you for being my manager, mentor and friend for close to 12 years now.

Matt, for many years of friendship, shared hangovers, business trips we have made together, and for you being the voice of reason in many situations. Also, I truly enjoyed our hackathon projects that to date almost all have become a reality (even if they were full rewrites of our proof-of-concept code, by someone else).

Nastya, thank you for being a friend. It’s been great growing our teams together. We managed to have marketing and advocacy reinforce each other.

Paul, for being a friend and sounding board, for coming up with wacky ideas, and for being a great manager for your team (and the Developer Advocacy team, going forward).

If we worked together, and you don’t see your name here, please don’t take it personally.

In those years, I’ve had the privilege to work with a fantastic team of developer advocates, many whom I’d consider my friends. The product teams, marketing, QA, copyeditors, the video team, technical writers, community support, HR, and many, many more are fantastic people, and my moving on does feel like leaving behind family a bit.

At the same time, I have known the folks at Duende Software for many, many years, and am looking forward to working with them in the near future.

Thanks everyone 💗