Joel Hawksley / joel@hawksley.org

Joel standing on a stage next to a TV on a stand with a presentation slide that says "Breaking up with the bundle"

Work

I’m a staff software engineer at GitHub, working on user interface architecture and strategy. I also lead development of the ViewComponent framework. I’ve previously worked at Galvanize, Wunder Capital, and MojoTech.

Career

I’ve spent most of my career building Ruby on Rails applications, increasingly with a focus on user interface architecture. I’ve made several contributions to Rails, including support for 3rd-party component frameworks, a helper for dynamically constructing CSS class names, template path annotations, marking code as uncacheable, and strict locals for templates and partials.

I’ve spoken at RailsConf (2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024), RubyConf, Brighton Ruby, RubyDay IT, RubyConf Taiwan, Rocky Mountain Ruby (2023, 2024), Boulder Ruby, Ruby Galaxy, ChicagoRuby, NYC.rb, Open Source Friday, and on the Remote Ruby, Ruby on Rails (2019, 2024), Ruby Blend, Code with Jason (2019, 2021, 2024), and Ruby Rogues podcasts.

Mentorship

I am a firm believer in the power of peer mentoring. In addition to being a Big Brother, I regularly support several aspiring engineers in their pursuit of a career in software. I’ve also volunteered as a guide at RailsConf for several years.

Photography

I previously worked as a photojournalist at several newspapers including The Roanoke Times and The Seattle Times, and have contracted for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. I now focus on travel and nature in my personal work.

Writing

Projects