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Discover 13 Best Express.js Developers

express.js developers - Discover 13 Best Express.js Developers

Express.js has been shaped by a diverse group of open-source contributors, startup founders, educators, and engineers.

Below is an updated list of 13 of the best Express.js developers worldwide, recognized for their code contributions to Express and its ecosystem, leadership in building Express-powered projects, influential tutorials, and other notable achievements:

  1. Jonathan Ong
  2. Jared Hanson
  3. Brad Traversy
  4. Mike McNeil
  5. Maximilian Schwarzmüller
  6. Andrew Mead
  7. Mosh Hamedani
  8. Blake Embrey
  9. Colt Steele
  10. Sahat Yalkabov
  11. Linus Unnebäck
  12. Hannah Wolfe
  13. Valeri Karpov

Now, let’s dive deeper into each developer’s background, contributions, and links to their work:

Jonathan Ong

YouTube Video

Nationality: American

Jonathan is an active open-source maintainer who was part of the Express core team and later co-created Koa.js – a framework designed by Express’s core members (TJ and Jonathan) to leverage modern JavaScript features.

During Express’s early years, Jonathan contributed numerous patches and middleware (he’s behind modules like cookie-parser, vhost, etc.). He earned commit rights on Express and was listed among its top contributors. His work on Koa (an ES2017-based minimalist framework) was an attempt to push beyond Express by using async functions, but it also influenced Express 5’s development. Jonathan’s dual roles in maintaining Express and pioneering Koa highlight his deep knowledge of Node web servers. He remains an influential voice in the Node community (often under the handle “jongleberry”).

Jared Hanson

I created Passport to make authentication unobtrusive and accessible. It should just work.

Nationality: American

Jared is the creator of Passport.js – the most popular authentication middleware for Node/Express applications.

Passport’s simple, unobtrusive approach to authentication (with over 500+ plug-in “strategies”) made it a standard component in Express apps worldwide. Jared has been a pivotal open-source contributor, also developing the Express-based framework Locomotive. As a Principal Architect at Auth0 (now Okta), he integrated his authentication expertise into industry services. Passport.js, downloaded millions of times per month, exemplifies Jared’s impact on the Express ecosystem, providing developers a universal, modular way to secure Express apps.

Brad Traversy

Brad Traversy - Discover 13 Best Express.js Developers

Nationality: American

Brad is a hugely popular web development instructor who runs the Traversy Media YouTube channel.

With over 1.7 million subscribers, Brad’s clear, practical crash courses have introduced countless newcomers to Express.js. His “Express JS Crash Course” on YouTube has hundreds of thousands of views, and he’s covered building REST APIs with Express, authentication, and more. Brad’s teaching style is accessible – he often takes learners from a blank file to a deployed Express/Node app in one video. He also offers a Node.js API course on Udemy. As an influencer, Brad has arguably trained more beginning Express developers through his free videos than almost anyone else. His channel is a go-to resource for up-to-date tutorials on the Express+Node stack.

Mike McNeil

Nationality: American

Mike is the creator of Sails.js, the popular MVC framework built on Express.js.

He developed Sails in 2012 to help his team prototype Node apps more rapidly, offering an out-of-the-box structure akin to Ruby on Rails but powered by Express underneath. Under Mike’s leadership, Sails became one of the most widely-used web frameworks in the Node/Express ecosystem, known for its real-time features (via Socket.io) and support for dozens of databases through Waterline ORM. He co-founded the company behind Sails (Balderdash, now The Sails Co.) and authored Sails.js in Action. Mike’s contributions paved the way for large-scale Express.js applications in startups and enterprises alike, demonstrating how Express’s flexibility can support higher-level frameworks.

Maximilian Schwarzmüller

Maximilian Schwarzmuller 1 - Discover 13 Best Express.js Developers

Nationality: German

Max is the co-founder of Academind and one of the top instructors on Udemy, known for NodeJS – The Complete Guide, a mammoth course covering Node, Express, REST, GraphQL, and more.

He has taught over 3 million students online, and his Node/Express content is highly rated for its depth and clarity. Max’s courses guide developers through building practical Express.js projects (like an MVC blog or REST APIs) step by step, including deployment and best practices. As a self-taught developer, he emphasizes understanding the “why” behind concepts, which resonates with learners. Maximilian’s work through Academind (and his YouTube tutorials on Node) has made advanced Express.js development approachable for a global audience.

Andrew Mead

Nationality: American

Andrew is an independent instructor who created The Complete Node.js Developer Course, which has become one of the best-selling Node/Express courses on Udemy.

Since its first edition in 2015, Andrew’s course (co-taught with Rob Percival) has enrolled over 400,000 students. It teaches Node and Express from the ground up by building real apps (a weather app, task manager API, chat app, etc.), emphasizing testing and deployment. Andrew is praised for his clear teaching and up-to-date content – he’s now on the 3rd edition of the Node course, incorporating the latest Express practices. He also runs a YouTube channel and podcast. Many developers got their start in back-end JavaScript through Andrew’s comprehensive Express tutorials.

Mosh Hamedani

Mosh Hamedani - Discover 13 Best Express.js Developers

Nationality: Iranian

Mosh is the creator of the “Programming with Mosh” YouTube channel and an online coding school.

An educator with over 4.5 million YouTube subscribers, Mosh has produced tutorials on practically every major programming topic – including a very popular Node.js/Express crash course. His teaching focuses on fundamentals and best practices (for example, he covers how to structure Express routes, controllers, and integrate with databases in a clean way). A software engineer turned instructor, Mosh’s videos and courses have made learning Express.js accessible to a massive audience of beginners. His Node.js course on his platform and YouTube covers building RESTful APIs with Express step by step. Mosh’s approachable style and comprehensive coverage have earned him a loyal following among aspiring developers.

Blake Embrey

Nationality: Australian

Blake is a prolific open-source developer and a member of the Express Technical Committee.

He’s best known for authoring path-to-regexp, the library that Express (and many other frameworks) use for high-performance route matching. Blake took over maintenance of path-to-regexp around Express 4’s release and has since published 8 major versions of it, enabling Express’s flexible routing syntax. Beyond that, he has contributed to Express’s core and middleware (like express-browserify, etc.), and worked on projects at companies like Auth0. Blake’s commitment to robust, regex-powered routing helped Express handle complex URL patterns efficiently. He also advocates for TypeScript in Node and has pushed type definitions for Express and its middleware.

Colt Steele

Colt Steele - Discover 13 Best Express.js Developers

Nationality: American

Colt is the instructor behind The Web Developer Bootcamp, one of Udemy’s most popular coding courses, which famously includes a solid introduction to Node.js and Express.

Since 2016, Colt’s bootcamp has enrolled nearly 500,000 students, many of whom built their first REST API or server-rendered app using Express under his guidance. The course’s project “YelpCamp” (a Yelp-like app) gave students hands-on experience with Express routes, middleware, MongoDB, and more. Colt, a former Bootcamp curriculum director, has a gift for breaking down complex topics. He updates the course regularly (as of 2025 edition) to cover modern Express and Node techniques. Countless junior developers today cite Colt Steele’s bootcamp as their introduction to Express.js development.

Sahat Yalkabov

Nationality: Uzbek

Sahat is best known as the creator of Hackathon Starter, a widely-used boilerplate for Node/Express web applications.

He built Hackathon Starter to help developers quickly spin up new apps with features like OAuth login (Facebook, Google, Twitter), account management, and API examples already in place – perfect for hackathons or prototypes. This open-source project (over 35k GitHub stars) has saved countless hours for Express developers. Sahat’s focus on simplicity and best practices means the starter is also a learning tool for structuring Express apps. Beyond this, he has worked on authentication solutions (he built the Satellizer Angular library) and has been involved in the developer community. His Hackathon Starter showcases how to assemble Express middleware and libraries into a cohesive starter app, and it remains a beloved resource.

Linus Unnebäck

Nationality: Swedish

Linus is an active member of the Express Technical Committee and the author of Multer, the most widely used file-upload middleware for Express.

Multer (built on busboy) became the standard way to handle multipart/form-data (file uploads) in Express apps, thanks to its simplicity and efficiency. Linus maintains Multer under the Express.js GitHub organization, and it’s used in thousands of projects. Beyond that, he’s contributed to other Node.js libraries and often provides guidance on issues and discussions in the Express repository. His work exemplifies the modular spirit of Express – rather than bloating the core, he built a focused tool that slots in as needed. Linus’s contributions help ensure the Express ecosystem has high-quality, maintained components for common tasks like file handling.

Hannah Wolfe

Hannah Wolfe - Discover 13 Best Express.js Developers

Nationality: British

Hannah is the co-founder and CTO of Ghost – the popular open-source publishing platform – and a rare example of a startup tech leader deeply involved in an Express.js codebase.

Ghost is a Node.js application that runs on an Express.js webserver to serve its themes and content. Back in 2013, Hannah joined John O’Nolan to build Ghost from scratch as an Express-based app, aiming to modernize blogging software. She led Ghost’s development through its early releases, implementing routing, theming (with Handlebars), and an admin API, all atop Express. Today Ghost has grown into a robust headless CMS used by thousands of sites, showcasing how far an Express.js application can scale. As a technical founder, Hannah’s work with Ghost demonstrates Express’s capability as the backbone of large production systems, and she continues to guide Ghost’s engineering team toward new innovations.

Valeri Karpov

Nationality: American

Valeri is a MongoDB engineer and the long-time maintainer of Mongoose ODM, a library frequently paired with Express in the classic MEAN stack.

In fact, Valeri famously coined the term “MEAN” stack (for MongoDB, Express, Angular, Node) in a 2013 blog post on the MongoDB site – a concept that greatly popularized Express as the go-to Node.js server. As Mongoose’s lead, he ensured smooth integration with Express for building MVC apps. Valeri also authored Professional AngularJS and shares Node/Express tips on his blog “The Code Barbarian.” By advocating the MEAN stack, he helped a generation of developers adopt Express for JavaScript-only web development. His work bridges the database and server layers of the stack.

Wrap Up

These legends represent exceptional talent, making them extremely challenging to headhunt. However, there are thousands of other highly skilled IT professionals available to hire with our help. Contact us, and we will be happy to discuss your hiring needs.

Note: We’ve dedicated significant time and effort to creating and verifying this curated list of top talent. However, if you believe a correction or addition is needed, feel free to reach out. We’ll gladly review and update the page.

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