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12 Best Neo4j Developers for Graph-Based Brilliance

neo4j developers - 12 Best Neo4j Developers for Graph-Based Brilliance

Neo4j has revolutionized the way we think about connected data, and its rise has been driven by a passionate, global community of graph enthusiasts.

This ecosystem includes prolific open-source contributors, founders building graph-powered startups, engineers scaling Neo4j at enterprise level, and educators advancing graph data science. From inventing query languages and building integrations to mentoring newcomers and solving real-world problems with graphs, these individuals have shaped the evolution of Neo4j across industries. Below is a handpicked and updated list of 12 of the world’s most impactful Neo4j developers, recognized for their contributions in these areas:

  1. Michael Hunger
  2. Nigel Small
  3. Jim Webber
  4. William Lyon
  5. Luanne Misquitta
  6. Stefan Armbruster
  7. Christophe Willemsen
  8. Mark Needham
  9. Rik Van Bruggen
  10. Gerrit Meier
  11. Matt Casters
  12. Michael Simons

Now, let’s delve into their profiles and contributions:

Michael Hunger

YouTube Video

Nationality: German

Michael Hunger is a 15+ year Neo4j veteran who has played many roles, currently heading Product Innovation and Developer Relations at Neo4j.

He co-created the popular APOC library (Awesome Procedures on Cypher) and champions integrations of graphs with emerging tech (e.g., GraphQL and Generative AI). Michael is a Java Champion passionate about open-source and mentoring; he’s nurtured Neo4j’s community and written innumerable blog posts and training materials. His leadership of Neo4j Labs and graph hackathons has empowered thousands of developers to embrace graph databases.

Nigel Small

Nationality: British

Nigel Small is the creator of Py2neo, the seminal Python client for Neo4j that for years provided Python developers a pythonic way to work with Neo4j’s REST and Bolt APIs.

An early Neo4j community contributor, Nigel’s work lowered barriers for data scientists to adopt graph databases. He has authored libraries in multiple languages and written about graph algorithms, becoming a polyglot graph expert. His open-source spirit and approachable tools (like the Geoff data format) helped Neo4j gain popularity in the Python ecosystem.

Jim Webber

Jim Webber - 12 Best Neo4j Developers for Graph-Based Brilliance

Nationality: British

Dr. Jim Webber is Neo4j’s Chief Scientist, renowned for co-authoring Graph Databases (O’Reilly) and advancing graph theory in industry.

He leads Neo4j’s research on distributed, fault-tolerant graph systems and has been instrumental in developing the Cypher query language and upcoming GQL standard. A frequent keynote speaker and visiting professor, Jim bridges academia and industry. His thought leadership and engineering insights have helped Neo4j scale for enterprise use cases, making him one of the most influential voices in graph technology.

William Lyon

Developers shouldn’t have to write boilerplate to work with their data — that’s what the graph can do for you.

Nationality: American

Will Lyon is a former Neo4j Developer Relations Engineer who built Neo4j’s GraphQL integration and the GRANDstack (GraphQL, React, Apollo, Neo4j) toolkit.

He created and maintained the Neo4j-GraphQL JS library and authored Fullstack GraphQL Applications with GRANDstack, enabling full-stack developers to easily use Neo4j. Will has shared countless graph tutorials (e.g., routing with OpenStreetMap) and continues to build innovative graph apps (geospatial search, podcast search, etc.). He represents Neo4j on the GraphQL Foundation, reflecting his influence in both graph and GraphQL communities.

Luanne Misquitta

Luanne Misquitta - 12 Best Neo4j Developers for Graph-Based Brilliance

Nationality: Indian

Luanne Misquitta is VP of Engineering at GraphAware and a leading Neo4j expert in the enterprise world.

She has implemented graph solutions for bank fraud detection, recommendations, and telecom networks. Luanne co-authored Neo4j: The Definitive Guide (O’Reilly), distilling her real-world experience into best practices. As a Neo4j-involved consultant since 2013, she also helped rewrite Spring Data Neo4j 4.x. Luanne frequently presents on graph data modeling and knowledge graphs, and as a Neo4j Ninja she mentors the community. Her mix of hands-on coding and thought leadership makes her a top Neo4j influencer.

Stefan Armbruster

Nationality: German

Known playfully as Neo4j’s “Graph Exorcist,” Stefan Armbruster is a Principal Field Engineer at Neo4j who is revered for his depth of Neo4j knowledge.

Stefan has contributed to APOC and helped design Neo4j’s operational features (indexes, clustering) to scale customer deployments. A top answerer on Neo4j’s community forums and Stack Overflow, he’s resolved countless graph problems for users. Stefan co-authored Neo4j in Action and has been with Neo4j since its early days, making him a go-to expert on best practices for modeling and performance tuning in Neo4j.

Christophe Willemsen

Christophe Willemsen - 12 Best Neo4j Developers for Graph-Based Brilliance

Nationality: Belgian

Christophe Willemsen is a Neo4j security and backend specialist and co-author of Neo4j: The Definitive Guide.

As GraphAware’s former CTO, he developed open-source Neo4j extensions including the GraphAware Framework, which provided production features like graph expiration, audit logging, and recommendations. Christophe is an active open-source contributor (a top Stack Overflow answerer for Neo4j) known for his handle “ikwattro.” He has also worked on the APOC library and Neo4j’s Elasticsearch integration. Christophe’s coding expertise and community support have made advanced Neo4j features accessible to all.

Mark Needham

Nationality: British

Mark Needham is a graph advocate and former Neo4j Developer Relations engineer who has helped users embrace graph data and even worked on Neo4j’s core clustering team.

Co-author of Graph Algorithms (O’Reilly), Mark has demystified graph analytics for developers. He wrote one of the earliest and most popular blogs on Neo4j, sharing “graphista” insights on modeling, import, and Cypher queries. Mark’s real-world examples—from recommending beers to analyzing GitHub data—have inspired many to adopt Neo4j. He remains an active blogger and speaker on graph data science and query techniques.

Rik Van Bruggen

Rik Van Bruggen - 12 Best Neo4j Developers for Graph-Based Brilliance

Nationality: Belgian

Rik Van Bruggen has been a Neo4j evangelist since the early days, known for hosting the Graphistania podcast (Neo4j’s official podcast) and authoring Learning Neo4j.

As Regional VP at Neo4j, Rik combined technical know-how with storytelling, interviewing community graph heroes and showcasing use cases. He also created graph apps (like a Neo4j beer recommendation demo) and organized graph meetups in Belgium. Rik’s approachable content – blogs, talks, and even a graph-inspired Belgian beer book – have introduced innumerable newcomers to Neo4j and the “graph way” of thinking.

Gerrit Meier

Nationality: German

Gerrit Meier is a Software Engineer at Neo4j who co-maintains Neo4j-OGM and Spring Data Neo4j alongside Michael Simons.

He has been pivotal in the new reactive Spring Data Neo4j 6+ releases, enabling fully reactive graph database access in Spring applications. Gerrit’s contributions include simplifying object-graph mapping and ensuring Neo4j support keeps up with Spring’s latest features. He’s active in the Java community (running a Java User Group in Germany) and often helps developers on Neo4j’s community site. Gerrit’s behind-the-scenes work on tooling makes him one of the unsung heroes enabling Neo4j in enterprise Java.

Matt Casters

Matt Casters - 12 Best Neo4j Developers for Graph-Based Brilliance

Nationality: Belgian

Matt Casters, famous as the creator of Pentaho Kettle (ETL tool), joined Neo4j and became its Chief Solutions Architect, bringing graph ETL to the mainstream.

He developed the Neo4j ETL tool and plugins that allow users to seamlessly import relational data into Neo4j, leveraging his decades of data integration expertise. Matt also co-founded Apache Hop (data orchestration) and integrated it with Neo4j. His arrival at Neo4j signaled the importance of ETL for graph adoption. Matt’s continued work helps enterprises easily connect Neo4j with their existing data stacks.

Michael Simons

Nationality: German

Michael Simons is the maintainer of Spring Data Neo4j and Neo4j-OGM since 2018, driving Neo4j’s integration in the Spring ecosystem.

At Neo4j, Michael ensures that Java and Kotlin developers have a smooth, idiomatic experience when building graph-powered applications. He co-created Neo4j-Migrations (graph refactoring tool) and has contributed to Cypher DSLs and testcontainers for Neo4j. As a Java community leader, Michael shares his expertise through blog posts and talks on using Neo4j with Spring Boot. His work enables countless enterprise developers to adopt Neo4j via familiar Spring Data repositories.

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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