Professional Role and Current Position
Bert Belder serves as the Founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Deno, a company headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area focused on developing a modern runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript. In his executive role, he is responsible for leading the technical strategy and product development of Deno's core offerings, which include the Deno Runtime and Deno Deploy products. The company operates with a strong engineering team under his leadership, including roles such as Engineering Manager, Software Engineers, and Site Reliability Engineers.
Company Overview and Market Position
Deno was established to modernize application development for the web, offering a secure and streamlined alternative runtime environment to Node.js. Notably, Deno Land Inc. is based in San Diego, CA, and has garnered significant attention from industry investors, including partnerships with notable firms such as Sequoia Capital. As of mid-2022, Sequoia Capital publicly announced its strategic partnership with Deno, indicating strong venture backing and market confidence in the platform's growth potential.
Career History and Technical Background
Bert Belder's career began in 2007 as a Software Architect for Aanenuitbesteden.nl BV. He advanced his expertise in backend development and became deeply involved with Node.js starting in 2011 when he became a Node.js core developer for Rackspace. His skilled contributions to Node.js and the JavaScript ecosystem laid the foundation for his later work co-founding Deno alongside Ryan Dahl, the original creator of Node.js. Bert also co-founded StrongLoop, Inc., which specialized in Node.js enterprise solutions, further demonstrating his extensive experience in scalable backend technologies.
Open Source Contributions
Bert maintains an active GitHub presence under the handle piscisaureus, with over 2.3k followers. He is prominently recognized for his work on several key open-source projects critical to the JavaScript and TypeScript paradigms:
- denoland/deno: The primary repository for the Deno runtime, implemented in Rust, with over 104k stars and 5.6k forks, indicating broad community adoption and influence.
- denoland/rusty_v8: A Rust binding for the V8 JavaScript engine, essential to Deno’s runtime performance.
- Other contributions include wepoll (a Windows epoll implementation) and involvement with libuv, the cross-platform asynchronous I/O library also used extensively by Node.js.
Public Engagement and Thought Leadership
Bert Belder regularly shares insights on the evolution and future of Deno in industry forums and media, including:
- A 2024 podcast interview discussing Deno’s roadmap and innovations.
- Presentations at high-profile developer conferences, such as dotJS in 2019.
- Coverage by venture capital thought leadership channels such as Sequoia Capital’s articles highlighting Deno's role as a modern web application runtime.
Network and Influence
Bert has cultivated a strong professional network, with LinkedIn connections exceeding 500 professionals. His position as a co-founder and CTO combined with his extensive technical contributions position him as a key decision-maker in technology strategy, product innovation, and open source community engagement at Deno.
This profile underscores Bert Belder’s critical influence within Deno and the broader JavaScript/TypeScript developer ecosystem. His background as a core contributor to Node.js, combined with executive leadership in a venture-backed company at the forefront of modern web runtime development, highlights both technical authority and strategic insight in the rapidly evolving software development landscape.
