Joel Hawksley
Joel Hawksley
joel@hawksley.org
Joel standing on a stage next to a projection screen with the GitHub logo. There are about 100 people in the audience
Speaking at Rocky Mountain Ruby 2025

Now

I’m a staff software engineer at GitHub, focusing on the health of our Ruby on Rails monolith. I also lead development of the ViewComponent framework. I live with my wife and two sons outside of Boulder, Colorado.

Career

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 created ViewComponent, a framework for creating reusable, testable and encapsulated view components that integrates seamlessly with Ruby on Rails.

I’ve spoken at RailsConf (2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024), RubyConf, Brighton Ruby, RubyDay IT, RubyConf Taiwan, Rocky Mountain Ruby (2023, 2024, 2025), Boulder Ruby yearly 2019-present (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2026), Ruby Galaxy, ChicagoRuby, NYC.rb, Vancouver Ruby, Toronto Ruby, SF Ruby, Geneva.rb and Open Source Friday. I also served on the RubyConf 2024 program committee and as a scholar guide at RailsConf for several years.

I’ve appeared on the Dead Code, Code and the Coding Coders who Code it, Maintainable Software, Remote Ruby, Ruby on Rails (2019, 2024), Ruby Blend, Code with Jason (2019, 2021, 2024), and Ruby Rogues podcasts.

I’ve made several contributions to the Home Assistant ecosystem, including support for folders on Apple Watch, filtering of declined calendar events, and extending the returned forecast window for WeatherKit.

I built my first SaaS product, a portfolio website platform for visual artists, while I was in high school. I’ve since rewritten it in Ruby on Rails, using it as a testbed for new technologies I want to learn, such as React.

Mentorship

I’m a strong believer in the power of peer mentoring. In addition to being a Big Brother, I regularly coach several aspiring engineers in their pursuit of a career in software.

Photography

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

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