About Me

I’m Den Odell and I’ve spent 25 years building web systems for companies whose users number in the hundreds of millions. The work I keep coming back to is the intersection of engineering and craft: software that performs well, works for everyone, and holds up at scale. I’ve written books on software development, led frontend architecture for brands like Nike and Volvo Cars, and currently work as a Staff Engineer at Canva.

Canva (2025 - )

At Canva I’m a Staff Frontend Engineer in the Pro Design group, working on integrating tools for professional designers across 265 million monthly active users.

Volvo Cars (2016-2025)

I built the Car Configurator and later the Offer Selector from scratch as the sole frontend engineer and owned it through launch across 70+ markets. The system handled pricing, configuration, and purchase flows for millions of users in dozens of languages, all running on a microfrontend architecture I designed and maintained as the team grew around it. Along the way I ended up building backend-for-frontend APIs, PDF generation services, and caching layers, which gradually shifted how I think about the boundary between frontend and full stack.

AKQA (2002-2015)

Thirteen years, from developer to Global Head of Web Development. I led frontend engineering across studios working with Nike, Ferrari, and MINI, set hiring standards, and built a cross-office engineering culture. I founded TECH.insight, a worldwide public developer event series that brought in speakers from Google, Adobe, and BBC, and TECH.review, a digital publication on development and design.

Books

My first two books were published by Apress in 2009 and 2014 and have been cited in over 80 academic papers and adopted by universities internationally. My current book, Performance Engineering in Practice, is with Manning and draws on everything I learned optimizing production systems across my career. I’m also a technical reviewer for O'Reilly Media.

Writing

My essays on engineering, performance, and the craft of building software have reached over 125,000 readers, with work shared by John Allsopp, Josh W. Comeau, Jeremy Keith, and Jeffrey Zeldman. My post on the HTML output tag reached #1 on Hacker News in October 2025.

More from Den

Monthly notes on engineering, writing, and the craft of building software. No fluff.