Compacted Context
I'm Dylan Martin, a product-minded tech lead who builds things end-to-end: from user research to system design to shipping code. I care about solving the right problems AND solving those problems right.
This is my website, Compacted Context, where I publish essays about software engineering, career reflections, or whatever else I'm thinking about, as well as digests of what I'm reading, watching, and thinking about.
Outside work, I'm an enthusiastic ski bum, erstwile rock climber, amateur powerlifter, wine midwit, jazz pianist, occasional DJ, aspiring polyglot, and purveyor of rare jawnz. I also travel a lot.
Currently
- Working on building the best experience for self-driving products @ PostHog
- Writing open source software and my blog
- Playing lots of chess
- Trying to join the 1000 club
Previously
- Led the feature flags team @ PostHog
- Founding software engineer @ BRINC, building the web app and data platform for first responders
- Board member @ The Lundquist Institute
- Founding engineer @ Cercle (AI + Healthcare)
- Early engineer @ Mercury (international payments)
- OSS & consulting @ 47 Degrees (acq. by Xebia) (functional programming in Haskell and Scala)
- 5 years @ Qualtrics (test tooling, distributed systems)
- Physics, CS, math, film, and music @ Whitman College
Interests
- Building products end-to-end
- Performant software
- Developer tools and making engineers more productive
- Compilers, interpreters, and languages
- LLM-assisted workflows
- Skiing, rock climbing, hiking, running
- Powerlifting
- Playing, writing, and producing music
- Fashion, architecture, and intentional aesthetic design
- Ergonomic keyboards