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Top 18 Serverless Developers Building the Future

serverless developers - Top 18 Serverless Developers Building the Future

Serverless computing has matured into a vibrant ecosystem led by innovative engineers, advocates, and entrepreneurs across the globe.

Over the past few years, these individuals have pushed the boundaries of cloud development – from creating popular open-source frameworks and products to educating the community through blogs, videos, and talks. This curated list highlights 18 of the world’s best serverless developers who have been especially active and influential since 2022. It spans open-source contributors, startup founders, technical educators, cloud provider experts, and more, reflecting a diversity of platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc.) and geographic backgrounds. Each person has demonstrated exceptional leadership in advancing serverless architecture through their code, content, or community engagement.

Below is the updated list of the top serverless developers (in no particular order), selected for their recent contributions and impact on the serverless ecosystem:

  1. Yan Cui
  2. Brian Leroux
  3. Jeremy Daly
  4. Rodric Rabbah
  5. Ben Kehoe
  6. Forrest Brazeal
  7. Donna Malayeri
  8. Marcia Villalba
  9. Aaron Stuyvenberg
  10. Aidan Steele
  11. Jeff Hollan
  12. Ajay Nair
  13. Sheen Brisals
  14. Ant Stanley
  15. Paul Johnston
  16. Erica Windisch
  17. Gojko Adzic
  18. Prashanth HN

Now, let’s delve deeper into their remarkable journeys and contributions.

Yan Cui

YouTube Video

Nationality: Chinese (based in Europe)

Yan Cui is an AWS Serverless Hero and one of the foremost experts on building production-grade serverless applications.

With 15+ years of engineering experience, he has helped organizations adopt AWS Lambda at scale since its early days. Yan is known for sharing deep technical insights on his blog “The Burning Monk” and through his Production-Ready Serverless courses. He currently serves as a Developer Advocate at Lumigo (a serverless monitoring platform) while also consulting for companies worldwide to implement event-driven architectures. A prolific speaker, Yan regularly appears at conferences and podcasts to discuss advanced serverless patterns, and his contributions have earned him recognition as a veteran thought leader in the serverless community.

Brian Leroux

Nationality: Canadian

Brian LeRoux is an influential serverless developer who blends open-source creativity with startup execution. He is the co-founder and CTO of Begin.com, a platform for instantly deploying web apps on a serverless backend.

In the process of building Begin (which helps teams manage apps via Slack), Brian and his team created the popular open-source framework Architect (arc.codes) – a minimalist toolkit for deploying AWS Lambda functions and cloud resources via simple code definitions. Brian has a long history in developer tools: he previously led the PhoneGap/Cordova mobile open-source project at Adobe and is known for fun side projects like wtfjs.com. An AWS Serverless Hero, he actively contributes to Arc and other projects on GitHub and shares his knowledge at conferences (e.g., GOTO, CityJS). Brian’s advocacy for a “developer-friendly” serverless experience and his open-source leadership make him a key figure in this space.

Jeremy Daly

Jeremy Daly 1 - Top 18 Serverless Developers Building the Future

Nationality: American

Jeremy Daly is a seasoned serverless advocate, startup veteran, and content creator in the cloud community.

He began building cloud applications in 2009 and became an AWS Serverless Hero after embracing AWS Lambda’s potential. Jeremy was formerly the CTO of Alert Logic and Director of Research at CloudZero, and in recent years co-founded Ampt, a developer platform reimagining how we build serverless apps. He’s widely known for his weekly Off-by-none newsletter and Serverless Chats podcast, which have educated thousands of developers on serverless trends. Jeremy also maintains open-source projects (like serverless MySQL) and speaks frequently at events. His multifaceted contributions – from thought leadership in blogs to hands-on tooling – make him one of the most influential voices in serverless today.

Rodric Rabbah

Nationality: American

Rodric Rabbah is a computer scientist and entrepreneur who has been at the forefront of serverless platform innovation. He is the co-creator and lead technical contributor of Apache OpenWhisk, an open-source serverless runtime that powers IBM Cloud Functions and other FaaS offerings.

During his time at IBM Research, Rodric helped design OpenWhisk’s scalable, event-driven architecture. He later founded Nimbella, a serverless cloud startup aimed at improving developer experience, which was successfully acquired by DigitalOcean in 2020. After the acquisition, Rodric joined DigitalOcean to integrate Nimbella’s technology, and he has since taken on a product leadership role at Postman (focused on low-code “Flows”). Rodric remains an active voice in the serverless community, often writing about serverless design and advocating for open standards. His blend of academic rigor and entrepreneurial execution cements his status as a serverless expert.

Ben Kehoe

Nationality: American

Ben Kehoe is a pioneer in applying serverless computing to real-world enterprise use cases. At iRobot, Ben led the company’s transition to a serverless IoT backend on AWS – connecting millions of robots to the cloud via AWS Lambda and IoT services.

An AWS Serverless Hero, he has been an outspoken advocate for serverless best practices, internal developer platforms, and cloud education. Ben frequently presents at AWS re:Invent and other conferences, sharing lessons learned from operating serverless systems at scale. He also writes insightful articles on Medium and engages on Twitter to push the conversation on topics like infrastructure as code and cloud policy. Ben’s mix of hands-on implementation experience and community engagement has made him a respected authority in the serverless world.

Forrest Brazeal

Forrest Brazeal - Top 18 Serverless Developers Building the Future

Nationality: American

Forrest Brazeal is a cloud architect turned content creator who has become a leading voice in cloud education and community engagement.

An AWS Serverless Hero and former Head of Content at Google Cloud, Forrest is known for making cloud computing fun and accessible through his creative mediums. He gained prominence at A Cloud Guru (a cloud training startup) where he built popular learning content and community programs, and later led developer media initiatives at Google Cloud until 2024. Forrest is also the author of The Read-Aloud Cloud, an illustrated book explaining cloud concepts through cartoons. Whether via his “FaaS and Furious” web comics, viral cloud parody songs, or incisive blog posts, Forrest’s unique blend of technical insight and humor has inspired a new generation of cloud engineers and solidified his status as an influential serverless educator.

Donna Malayeri

Nationality: American

Dr. Donna Malayeri has played key product roles in the serverless space across multiple cloud providers. She was previously a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, where she guided Azure Functions from its private beta through general availability, helping shape one of the first FaaS platforms in the industry.

In recent years, Donna moved to Google Cloud and became a Product Manager for Serverless there, focusing on services like Cloud Run. With this dual perspective, she frequently speaks at conferences (QCon, GCP Next) about serverless trends and best practices. Donna is also known for her academic background and early work at Pulumi (cloud infrastructure as code). Her experience launching serverless features on both Azure and Google Cloud, combined with her community talks and writings, make her a globally recognized expert and advocate for serverless computing in the product management realm.

Marcia Villalba

Marcia Villalba - Top 18 Serverless Developers Building the Future

Nationality: Uruguayan (based in Finland)

Marcia Villalba is a Principal Developer Advocate at AWS who has become one of the community’s most prolific serverless educators.

With over a decade in software engineering, Marcia shares her expertise primarily through video content. She hosts the popular “FooBar” YouTube channel, publishing at least one new serverless tutorial each week. Her videos and talks break down how to build applications with AWS Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, and other managed services, often with fun demos and real-world use cases. Marcia is also an AWS Serverless Hero and has created Spanish-language cloud content to broaden reach. In her advocacy role at AWS, she focuses on helping developers (from beginners to advanced) succeed with serverless, making her a highly visible and trusted figure in the serverless community.

Aaron Stuyvenberg

Nationality: American

Aaron “AJ” Stuyvenberg has been a dedicated member of the serverless community since 2017 and is known for improving the developer experience of serverless applications. He was previously a Principal Engineer at Serverless Inc., where he worked on the Serverless Framework and related tooling.

Now as a Staff Engineer at Datadog, AJ focuses on serverless and distributed systems observability – helping build monitoring tools for AWS Lambda and beyond. He’s an active open-source contributor, creating utilities and libraries that simplify serverless workflows (for example, projects to aid local testing and debugging of Lambdas). AJ also shares practical tips on his personal tech blog and speaks at events like AWS re:Invent and Summits, demystifying topics like Lambda performance and monitoring. His hands-on engineering contributions and knowledge sharing have earned him recognition as an AWS Serverless Hero and go-to expert on serverless dev tools.

Aidan Steele

Nationality: Australian

Aidan Steele is a highly innovative AWS Serverless Hero from Melbourne known for pushing AWS services to their limits in creative ways. Having used AWS since 2008, Aidan’s interests span containers and serverless functions – especially finding clever ways to blur the lines between them.

He frequently publishes open-source projects on GitHub showcasing novel serverless use cases, often with a focus on security and networking. For example, he’s demonstrated unconventional ideas like running Kubernetes-style workloads on Lambda and built tools like “Flowdog” (a playful AWS networking demo). Aidan’s willingness to explore the “edge cases” of AWS has yielded valuable insights for the community, and he shares his discoveries through detailed Twitter threads and conference talks. By uncovering what’s possible (and what’s not) with serverless building blocks, Aidan has become an influential voice and a must-follow for AWS developers seeking deep technical tricks.

Jeff Hollan

Jeff Hollan - Top 18 Serverless Developers Building the Future

Nationality: American

Jeff Hollan is best known as the friendly face of Microsoft Azure Functions during its rise, having served as a Senior Program Manager and community champion for Azure’s serverless platform. At Microsoft, Jeff helped developers build event-driven applications on Azure, often demoing new features at //Build conferences and user groups.

His enthusiasm for serverless was evident on his Twitter feed and Medium blog, where he shared tips for Azure Functions and Logic Apps. Jeff also co-hosted the Azure Functions Live webcast series, engaging directly with the community. In 2021, he transitioned to lead teams in the Power Platform, but he remains a respected authority on serverless architecture on Azure. Jeff’s contributions to Azure’s serverless developer experience and his approachable teaching style have made a lasting impact on how the .NET and cloud communities perceive serverless computing.

Ajay Nair

Nationality: Indian-American

Ajay Nair is the head of product management for AWS Lambda, meaning he oversees the roadmap and strategy for AWS’s flagship serverless compute service. With Amazon since Lambda’s early days, Ajay has guided the launch of numerous features that improved performance and usability for developers.

Though AWS product managers are often tight-lipped about future plans, Ajay is a valuable source of insights into serverless trends – his public talks and tweets often highlight new use cases and best practices for Lambda. He frequently engages with the community at events like AWS re:Invent and through blogging on the AWS Compute Blog. By bridging customer needs and AWS’s engineering, Ajay plays a crucial behind-the-scenes role in advancing serverless technology. His leadership ensures AWS Lambda continues to evolve as a cornerstone of modern cloud applications.

Sheen Brisals

Sheen Brisals - Top 18 Serverless Developers Building the Future

Nationality: British (UK)

Sheen Brisals is known for spearheading one of the most notable enterprise serverless transformations – the rebuild of LEGO’s e-commerce platform (LEGO.com) using serverless microservices on AWS.

As a Senior Engineering Manager at LEGO and an AWS Serverless Hero, Sheen guided multiple engineering teams to architect and implement event-driven, serverless solutions at scale. Their success (dramatically improving scalability and time-to-market) has been featured in AWS re:Invent talks and case studies. Sheen actively shares lessons from this journey through blog posts, webinars, and talks at Serverless Days events. He emphasizes culture and organizational practices needed for serverless adoption, not just the tech. Outside of LEGO, Sheen mentors others in the community and advocates for diversity in tech. His real-world achievements and community contributions make him a trailblazer for applying serverless in large organizations.

Ant Stanley

Nationality: British

Ant Stanley has been a driving force in the global serverless community, helping to connect and educate engineers through events. He co-organized the first ServerlessConf in New York (2016) and then founded “JeffConf” in London – a tongue-in-cheek named conference that evolved into ServerlessDays, the worldwide series of community-led events.

Ant’s grassroots efforts have grown ServerlessDays to dozens of cities, fostering knowledge-sharing on serverless tech across Europe, Asia, and beyond. He also co-founded A Cloud Guru in its very early stage (helping launch their initial conference), and later ran his own consultancy focused on cloud architecture. Now, Ant continues to be a regular conference speaker and a coordinator for ServerlessDays globally. Through his work, he’s enabled countless developers to learn from each other’s serverless journeys. His passion for community building and no-nonsense cloud advice (often shared on Twitter) have made him a respected figure in serverless circles.

Paul Johnston

Nationality: British

Paul Johnston is a veteran of the serverless movement who has worn many hats: startup CTO, AWS Developer Advocate, and community organizer. He was one of the co-founders of the ServerlessDays (formerly JeffConf) community conferences, helping kickstart the global meetup and event ecosystem around serverless tech.

Paul served as a Senior Developer Advocate at AWS focusing on serverless in 2018, where he worked to educate enterprise customers. In recent years he has shifted towards consulting and climate-focused tech, but remains an active commentator on serverless architecture through his Medium blog and Twitter. Paul often writes about the broader implications of serverless, from cost modeling to sustainability, challenging the industry to think beyond just code. His early and ongoing contributions – including co-authoring reports and organizing community content – have cemented his status as an influential thought leader in serverless computing.

Erica Windisch

Erica Windisch - Top 18 Serverless Developers Building the Future

Nationality: American

Erica Windisch has been a prominent figure in the intersection of serverless and DevOps, with a particular focus on observability and security. She is the co-founder and CTO of IOpipe, a serverless monitoring startup that pioneered real-time tracing and metrics for AWS Lambda (and was later acquired by New Relic).

With a background in cloud infrastructure (previously a Docker core contributor), Erica recognized early the importance of visibility into serverless applications. She became an AWS Serverless Hero and has spoken at conferences worldwide – including a memorable keynote at Serverless Days London – about topics like debugging serverless architectures and ensuring reliability without servers. Erica also contributed content to the community through IOpipe’s blog and webinars, helping teams understand how to manage and trust their serverless deployments. As a female founder in a cutting-edge tech domain, she has been an inspiration and mentor to others, and her technical leadership continues to influence the evolution of serverless DevOps tools.

Gojko Adzic

The real power of serverless is not in scaling to millions, but in scaling down to zero.

Nationality: Serbian (based in UK)

Gojko Adzic is an accomplished author and architect who has helped developers embrace serverless through his writing and tooling. An AWS Serverless Hero, Gojko wrote the popular book “Running Serverless” (2019), an introduction to AWS Lambda and the AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM) that has guided many engineers in their first serverless projects.

He also co-authored “Serverless Applications with Node.js” alongside his colleagues Aleksandar Simovic and Slobodan Stojanović, and together they are working on a follow-up book about GraphQL and serverless. As the CTO of Neuri Consulting, Gojko has built systems for clients using serverless architectures on AWS. He often shares practical patterns (and pitfalls) on his blog and in conference talks, drawing on his deep experience in agile and DevOps. Known as a thought leader from his work in the testing community (he created “Impact Mapping”), Gojko brings a pragmatic, developer-centric perspective to serverless that resonates globally.

Prashanth HN

Nationality: Indian

Prashanth HN is a leading serverless advocate in India, known for both his entrepreneurial and community-building achievements. He is the Co-founder and CTO of AntStack.io, a cloud consulting startup that specializes in crafting full-stack serverless solutions for clients.

Prashanth has been an AWS Serverless Hero since 2019 and a community leader of the AWS Users Group in Bengaluru. He actively mentors startups and developers on embracing serverless architectures, frequently blogging about topics ranging from beginner how-tos to advanced architectures on his personal site. He’s also contributed tutorials to the official AWS Amplify community blog, reflecting his expertise in serverless web and mobile backends. Notably, Prashanth created Lanyard, an open-source serverless agenda app for tech events, which gained recognition at AWS Community Day India. Through regular tech talks, hackathon mentorships, and grassroots evangelism, Prashanth has been instrumental in growing the serverless developer community in India and beyond.

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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