About Tim Schilling

A photo of me speaking at DjangoCon US 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. <br />Credit: <a href="https://bartpawlik.format.com/">Bartek Pawlik</a> — A photo of me speaking at DjangoCon US 2025 in Chicago, Illinois.
Credit: Bartek Pawlik

My Story

I’ve been a professional software engineer since 2009, working across several industries including EdTech, e-commerce, and platform integrations. Along the way, I’ve led development teams, mentored engineers at all levels, and built everything from analytics platforms to social networks.

The common thread that pulls those experiences together for me? Supporting the success of others. Whether it’s answering questions, giving a talk, writing blog posts, or contributing to open source; I enjoy helping people improve. Serving as a mentor through programs like Underdog Devs and Djangonaut Space, maintaining packages, and answering help questions, I’ve been able to support developers at all stages of their careers. Better Simple was born as an extension of that same mission.

Want to learn more?

If you’re curious to know what I’ve specifically been doing the past few years, I’ve made it a habit to write a year in review every year. I’ve also written a collection of other articles in which I share more about myself.

Professional Experience

Over 15+ years, I’ve worked on a variety of projects across different industries:

EdTech Analytics: Led the development team while building systems to identify at-risk students and provide actionable insights to educators.
E-commerce: Developed online stores with payment processing, shipping integrations, and inventory management
Social Platforms: Engineered notification systems, real-time updates, and background processing for social networks
Integrations: Connected systems with LMSes, Google’s APIs, Stripe, FedEx, and several other APIs

I’ve worked as both an individual contributor and a development lead, giving me perspective on technical challenges and team dynamics alike.

Community Involvement

Current Roles

Django 6.x Steering Council: Helping guide Django’s technical direction (2025–2026)
Django Commons Administrator: Helping support maintainers for community-maintained Django packages (2024–present)
Djangonaut Space Admin: Overseeing the mentorship program for Django contributors (2023–present)
Space Reviewer: Reviewing contributions in the Djangonaut Space program (2024–present)

Past Roles

DEFNA Secretary/Director: Django Events Foundation North America (2023–2024)
DjangoCon US Organizer (2023-2024)
Google Summer of Code Mentor: Mentored async support for django-debug-toolbar (2024)
Djangonaut Space Navigator: Mentor in Session 1, supported Sessions 4 and 5.
Django Discord Moderator (2023)
Underdog Devs Mentor: Project Underdog program (2021–2023)