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About

·1082 words

I’m Den Delimarsky. I am an engineer and product manager, currently working at Microsoft in the Identity and Network Access (IDNA) division helping the team ship a great authentication library. I started my engineering journey all the way back in the 90s, with a 386 box that was barely enough to run DOS games (I’ve upgraded since then). I’ve spent plenty of time writing code in Visual Basic 6.0 but for more than two decades now I am writing C# and Python. I’m learning C++, Rust, and Go when I need to really get out of my comfort zone.

I genuinely enjoy mixing product sense with putting hands on the keyboard and getting code out to the public - that’s the reason I steered my career towards developer tools and experiences.

Den with his wife near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, CA

What projects do you build and maintain? #

If you’re on Windows and felt like the caffeinate macOS tool is missing, I built (and continue building) PowerToys Awake. I am also making my configuration settings public to help Windows developers have a clean and robust dev box.

As a product manager (PM), I am also keenly aware of just how little comprehensive guidance there is on what it means to be a great PM, which led me to starting an open-source list of resources to help aspiring and more veteran PMs learn the craft.

I also use a Stream Deck fairly regularly but wanted to make sure that I have full control of the device. That’s why I reverse engineered its USB protocol and built a .NET library around it.

Since 2020 I am running a podcast that sheds a light on what it means to build a great career in the technology space. Notable guests include Jeff Atwood, Sam Saccone, Gennadiy Korol, Chris Coyier, Camille Fournier, Charlie Kindel, and Mayuko Inoue. You can also check out all the interviews on YouTube if video is your thing.

If you like Seinfeld, you might like his recent transition to working in tech.

I like blogging and standards (you can follow this blog in your RSS reader) so I started an aggregator of great blogs to follow.

Since 2024, I maintain a multi-tool for Halo Infinite players called OpenSpartan Workshop. It’s an unofficial companion app that stores data locally and allows anyone to query it from a SQLite database on their computer. The beauty of this approach is that it enables much richer insights than what the API provides out-of-the-box. You can see some of these experiments in a Jupyter notebook I also maintain.

What’s up with all the Halo stuff? #

Plain and simple, I like Halo. I stick to Team Slayer and Husky Raid lobbies in Halo Infinite with the occasional venture into Ranked (which is rare - I don’t really care much about ranked progression).

I am working through the Halo: Master Chief Collection (MCC) campaigns. I try to complete those on Legendary (Halo Infinite being the only one I attempted LASO in).

In the past, I reverse engineered the Halo Infinite REST API so that I could easily track and analyze my match stats (that ended up in its own .NET library at the time).

Bandit EVO has grown on me, but BR-75 is the weapon of choice, with the Needler being a close second.

Have you done anything before? #

There are a few things that I’ve done in the past professionally:

  • I’ve worked at Netlify as a Group Product Manager, leading the product management team in building out the ecosystem muscle for the web platform. This work was also covered on VentureBeat.
  • I took the role of a Technical Advisor to the Corporate Vice President of Developer Relations at Microsoft, helping craft a strategy for open-source project engagement.
  • I was a Senior Product Manager - Technical at Amazon Web Services, building third-party API integrations with EventBridge.
  • I led the effort on the docs.microsoft.com team (at Microsoft, of course) in building a robust, reliable, and scalable API documentation automation and code sample infrastructure. Tools I and my team built are still in production to this day.
  • I worked as a Product Manager on the Outlook team at Microsoft, shipping Outlook Groups to customers around the globe.
  • I collaborated with the Coding4Fun folks at Microsoft in building a demo game that showed how to use the Windows DirectX APIs in the newly minted modern (formerly known as Metro) apps.

Some of the projects that I built outside of work, that are no longer maintained, include:

When I have time, I also speak at technical events and on podcasts. Those include:

Contact #

I generally do not answer personal email (there are, of course, exceptions). I strongly believe in focus and prioritizing time for building, which eats away at my ability to spend a lot of time emailing folks. If you work with me, you know how to reach me. Otherwise, the best way to connect with me is directly through the channels associated with whatever project I am maintaining.

Disclaimer #

All opinions presented on this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of my employer. It works the other way around too.

Den Delimarsky
Author
Den Delimarsky
I am an engineer, spending inordinate amounts of time tinkering with code, exploring trails, APIs, and having conversations in technical communities.