# Emelia (@thisismissem.social)

Profile: https://sifa.id/p/thisismissem.social
Headline: Independent Social Web Developer / Founder of Unobvious Technology UG

## About

Emelia Smith is an expert in Node.js, React & GraphQL with over a decade of experience as a software engineer. Her approach to software development is data-centric and developer-supportive, balancing both team needs and product requirements. She finds mentoring and pair-programming really rewarding, and excels at planning and developing solutions for long-term timescales.

At present, Emelia is focused on trust & safety for the open social web, making contributions to projects using both AT Protocol and ActivityPub. I'm also working as a freelancer with clients in each protocol.

## Career

- **Open Social Web Developer at Self-employed** (Aug 2023 - Present)
  Remote
  In 2023, I started working on Fediverse projects full-time, contributing to Mastodon, and working on improving Trust & Safety tooling for federated social media.
  
  During 2024, I worked with IFTAS as a client, founded the ActivityPub Trust & Safety taskforce, and also contributed to Mastodon. With IFTAS, I lead the development of the IFTAS Content Classification Service and IFTAS FediCheck service. In Mastodon I made major improvements to their OAuth implementation and contributed moderation features.
  
  In 2025, I built FediMod FIRES, a tool for distributing moderation data to Fediverse servers, which was funded by an NLNet NGI0 Entrust grant, whilst also doing some freelance work.
  
  Now, I'm building with AT Protocol, who adopted the Client ID Metadata Documents internet draft I co-authored for OAuth.
  
  You can hire me to help you build for the open social web.
- **Software Engineer at Bluesky Social PBC** (Jun 2026 - Present)
  Freelance · Remote
  Working on the PDS
- **Freelance Software Engineer at Germ Network** (Dec 2025 - Present)
  Germ Network, the End-to-End Encrypted Messenger built on AT Protocol, came to me with a problem: Their OAuth implementation was having problems, and they needed them fixed before launch.
  
  I've helped them rework their OAuth implementation to be more reliable, contributing to various open source dependencies that they use.
- **Founder & Managing Director at Unobvious Technology UG** (Apr 2017 - Present)
  Berlin, DE
  We're building tech for people who don't have access to most mainstream tech; They do jobs just like us, and work hard every day, so why shouldn't they have tech that empowers them to do their jobs safely and efficiently? We're building tech for Sex Workers and the Adult Industry.
- **Software Engineer at Eurosky / Stichting Modal** (Mar 2026 - Apr 2026)
  Contract · Remote
  Launched Eurosky portal
- **Advisor at IFTAS** (Nov 2023 - Mar 2025)
  Working with the non-profit's board as an advisor, with a focus on technical implementation and review. IFTAS focuses on improving trust and safety across independent and federated social media.
- **Technical Lead - IFTAS CCS at IFTAS** (Dec 2023 - Sep 2024)
  Designed and lead development of the IFTAS CCS project for content classification for the fediverse, detecting and alerting when CSAM is posted to enrolled instances.
  
  Worked with Node.js, Adonis.js, Kafka, Kubernetes, and Terraform.
- **Senior Software Engineer at Yara International** (Jul 2020 - Aug 2021)
  Berlin, DE
  Developing tooling, platforms, and patterns to empower developers at Yara Digital Labs to build great products. Primarily working with Node.js and React.
- **Senior Software Engineer at Quandoo** (Jul 2019 - Jun 2020)
  Berlin, Berlin, DE
  Working with Apache Kafka to develop applications on the Kappa Architecture using Node.js, TypeScript, and React.
- **Senior Fullstack Developer at Movinga** (Jan 2019 - Jun 2019)
  Berlin, Berlin, DE
  Helped maintain & develop Ruby on Rails backends, assisted with frontend development, mentored colleagues & helped write GitLab CI configurations
- **Senior Fullstack Developer at Highsnobiety** (Jul 2018 - Dec 2018)
  Berlin
  Helped develop the Cloudflare Workers based proxy to allow them to go from Wordpress to React. Also worked a bit on E-commerce with CommerceTools
- **Technical Lead at First Asset HR** (Jan 2018 - May 2018)
  Consulting Tech Lead, working with them to build our their initial development team and tech stack.
- **Senior Software Engineer at ResearchGate** (Jun 2017 - Sep 2017)
  Berlin Area, DE
  Refactoring legacy code to react.
- **Data Engineer at Ada Health** (Jan 2017 - Apr 2017)
  Berlin Area, DE
  Unfortunately not the Data Engineering we'd expect, but instead lead the effort to clean up their mess of a Redux, Sagas, and React Native Application.
- **Training Specialist at GraphQL Training – BrandedCode** (Nov 2016 - Apr 2017)
  Berlin, DE
  You may have recently been told about a new technology called GraphQL, so now you're wanting to learn more with professional training for yourself or your team.
  
  Book a training session, and I'll teach you about GraphQL & how to make use of it for you and your team.
- **Software Development Consultant at FreightHub GmbH** (Oct 2016 - Nov 2016)
  Berlin Area, DE
  Researched & improved node.js performance metrics using flamegraphs, mongodb optimisations and statsd/graphite. Also participated heavily in architecture discussions for future projects, and actively reviewed code helping the development team produce higher quality code.
- **Senior Software Engineer at IDAGIO** (Jun 2015 - Jul 2016)
  Berlin Area, DE
  Lead the development of their frontend architecture, developing patterns for Redux that back their Web player. These patterns are still in use today, four years later.
  
  Later moved on to rearchitecting their backend into a series of services, each responsible for distinct datasets. Used Ruby & SQL to write an ETL to move data from PostgreSQL to Elasticsearch.
  
  Also helped implement the CDN architecture, and teach the managing director how to use BI tools like Periscope.
- **Independent Software Consultant at BrandedCode** (Apr 2014 - Jun 2015)
  In 2010, the studio was shut down to focus on working at various startups. Fast forward four years, the studio relaunched. For the following two years, we partnered with startups, accelerating their grow and product development. Some of our clients include Motivii Limited, Driftrock Marketing, and Resin.io
- **Software Development Contractor at Motivii** (Feb 2015 - May 2015)
  London, GB
  Working with Eamon (the CEO) and his team, Emelia helped them launch their initial offering by building out the backend of their application. She took a lead role in designing the user experience of the onboarding journey for web.
  
  Development was Ruby on Rails, DynamoDB, and Complex Event Processing (used for big data and analytics processing).
- **Contract Software Developer at NTS Radio** (Aug 2014 - Jan 2015)
  Development and deployment of user-facing website, metadata API, and content management system. Also involved improving network, studio and streaming infrastructure.
- **Contract Software Developer at Driftrock** (Jun 2014 - Jul 2014)
  Lead Developer on the Driftrock Elements product, which has since been rebranded as one of Driftrock's core product offering as Driftrock Triggers. The product helps marketing team trigger ads at highly relevant times, increasing return on investment of advertising spending.
  
  The product was in Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, JavaScript (React/Backbone.js), and a custom user query engine.
- **Contract Software Engineer at SimpleTax** (May 2014)
  Worked on User Experience and User Interactions, designing new features. Also worked on improving the code quality of an ageing and complex codebase built with Backbone.js and Django, written in JavaScript and Python.
- **Lead Backend Developer at Kano Computing** (Jan 2014 - Mar 2014)
  Developing the initial generation of web infrastructure and user platform services using Node.js, Amazon Web Services, and various database technologies. This infrastructure needed to be developed to be highly scalable from the start, as we already had a large consumer market share.
  
  Kano produces a platform and product to encourage people to learn about computers and how they work.
- **Consultant at Balena** (Nov 2013 - Jan 2014)
  London, GB
  A platform for developing and delivering Internet of Things and Connected Computing products and services. Hired to work on the initial marketing and developer outreach strategy, given her vast experience contributing to open-source, giving technical presentations, and handling developer relations. (I worked for their predecessor Resin.io)
- **Frontend Developer at State** (Jan 2012 - Nov 2013)
  Nottinghill Gate
  State is building an opinion network for the world, a town square to share opinions. I worked as a front-end developer for them, working with their custom front-end framework, Eyebrow.js (similar to Ember, Meteor and Angular). This was built on Dojo Toolkit and Node.js; Other roles included building HTML emails and working heavily with Mailchimp.
- **Software Engineer at Pusher** (Apr 2011 - Dec 2011)
  London
  Maintained and scaled Realtime Web Infrastructure, as part of her work, Emelia was required to attend various conferences and handle some developer relations. As the team at Pusher was small at the time, Emelia was also on-call for handling outages and uptime.
- **Senior Software Engineer at Votizen** (Nov 2010 - Feb 2011)
  Worked on data mining from social media and natural language processing with Node.js. Responsible for hiring and growing their team for developing Node.js.
- **Independent Consultant at BrandedCode** (Jul 2007 - Nov 2010)
  Worked with a variety of clients on a variety of projects, mainly website builds and open-source integrations.
- **Contract Software Engineer at Uxebu GmbH** (Sep 2009 - Jul 2010)
  Worked with a German team building developer tools & prototypes with Dojo Toolkit.
- **Web Frontend Engineer at NapalmRiot** (Jun 2008 - Mar 2009)
  Emelia was one of the senior frontend engineers, working remotely from Australia with this predominantly US based team was a highly formative experience, and she gave vast insight into how to manage and work within distributed teams, and communicate technical ideas.
  
  She worked on build a complete rich JavaScript and CSS framework to accelerate product development.

## Projects

- **Decentralizing FedCM** — https://atproto.com/blog/working-to-decentralize-fedcm (Mar 2026 - Present)
  Bluesky Social PBC have given a grant to Emelia Smith, an Invited Expert with the FedID Working Group, to work on FedCM with the goal of making FedCM really work for the decentralized web.
- **Questionable.fyi** — https://questionable.fyi (Jan 2026 - Present)
  Everyone has questions, let's get some answers!
- **Endotracker** — https://github.com/thisismissem/endotracker (Dec 2024 - Present)
  A small app for tracking endocrinology data over time, allowing better comparison between results
- **Node Websocket Server** — https://github.com/miksago/node-websocket-server/ (May 2009 - Aug 2014)
  First spec-compliant WebSocket server for Node.js, Development ended September 2011, officially deprecated and removed from NPM August 2014.

## Publications

- Update #1: Getting started and keeping momentum — decentralizing-fedcm.leaflet.pub (Oct 2026) https://decentralizing-fedcm.leaflet.pub/3mwwdgslgms2c
- The Internet was never real — thisismissem.leaflet.pub (Aug 2026) https://thisismissem.leaflet.pub/3msz2el2hxk2x
- TIL: Ignoring other people's gits — til-tech.pckt.blog (Aug 2026) https://til-tech.pckt.blog/til-ignoring-other-peoples-gits-vx0by0t
- TYL: npx setup-trusted-publishing — til-tech.pckt.blog (Jul 2026) https://til-tech.pckt.blog/tyl-npx-setup-trusted-publishing-hz43t4e
- TIL: Docker build target — til-tech.pckt.blog (Jul 2026) https://til-tech.pckt.blog/til-docker-build-target-43wba1t
- On the need for speed — thisismissem.leaflet.pub (Jul 2026) https://thisismissem.leaflet.pub/3mqszq6mh2c2v
- Don't celebrate this — thisismissem.leaflet.pub (Jun 2026) https://thisismissem.leaflet.pub/3moh7otauq22g
- On being believed — thisismissem.leaflet.pub (Jun 2026) https://thisismissem.leaflet.pub/3moeir3ek4s2d
- On being valued — thisismissem.leaflet.pub (Mar 2026) https://thisismissem.leaflet.pub/3miajjbhi6c2w
- On being slow — thisismissem.leaflet.pub (Mar 2026) https://thisismissem.leaflet.pub/3mgsrrotbj22l
- Working to Decentralize FedCM — decentralizing-fedcm.leaflet.pub (Mar 2026) https://decentralizing-fedcm.leaflet.pub/3mggfw4gdx22w
- Are you in the right room? — thisismissem.leaflet.pub (Feb 2026) https://thisismissem.leaflet.pub/3mersxir26k2q
- On Financial Insecurity — thisismissem.leaflet.pub (Jan 2026) https://thisismissem.leaflet.pub/3mdh4yan3xs23
- Space for change — thisismissem.leaflet.pub (Jan 2026) https://thisismissem.leaflet.pub/3md6hz3ug2c2c
- Introducing Realtime — Node.js Dublin (Jun 2012) https://speakerdeck.com/miksago/introducing-realtime-nodejs-dublin
- Sub-Protocols Over Websockets — Keeping It Realtime Conference (Oct 2011) https://vimeo.com/41370570
- The Noded Podcast (Nov 2010)
- Emelia's Writings (Jan 2010) https://writings.thisismissem.social
- The Changelog Podcast — RIZN Media (2010)

## Skills

### Technical
- ActivityPub
- Adonis.js
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Apache Kafka
- AT Protocol
- Data Engineering
- Databases
- Extract, Transform, Load (ETL)
- Front-end
- Git
- GitHub
- GraphQL
- HTML
- JavaScript
- jQuery
- JSON
- Kubernetes
- Mobile Applications
- MongoDB
- MySQL
- Nest.js
- Node.js
- OAuth
- OOP
- Platform Engineering
- PostgreSQL
- Programming
- React Native
- React.js
- Redux.js
- REST
- Ruby
- Ruby on Rails
- Site Reliability Engineering
- Software Architecture
- Software Development
- SQL
- Swift (Programming Language)
- System Architecture
- Tailwind CSS
- Terraform
- TypeScript
- Web Development
- XHTML
### Business
- Agile Methodologies
- Content Management Systems (CMS)
- Email Marketing
- MailChimp
- Project Management
- SEO
### Creative
- Information Architecture
- User Experience
### Interpersonal
- English
- Technical Leadership
### Community
- Open Source
### Other
- Advisory Boards
- APIs
- Cross-browser Compatibility
- Dojo
- Expert Advisor
- Facebook API
- MVC
- Solid
- Spa
- Start-ups
- Technical Advisory
- Web Applications
- Web Standards

## Education

- **Charles Sturt University** — Computer Science (Jan 2008 - Dec 2009)

## Involvement

### Volunteering
- IFTAS (May 2023 - Present)
  Volunteer
  I've been assisting with technical feedback and setting up the initial RFC / proposals infrastructure. As well as joining calls hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace discussing moderation and trust & safety
- Mastodon (Feb 2023 - Present)
  Open Source Developer
  Contributing to the development of Mastodon through reviewing pull requests, working on improving the codebase of the streaming server, and investigating moderation tooling. Very actively involved in the Mastodon Discord, and finding & resolving interoperability issues between different federated social web platforms (e.g., pixelfed <-> mastodon, calckey <-> mastodon, etc).
  
  Contributions can be found at:
  \- https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Athisismissem
  \- https://github.com/mastodon/joinmastodon.org/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Athisismissem
  \- https://github.com/mastodon/documentation/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Athisismissem
- Hachyderm.io (Feb 2023 - Present)
  Technical Advisor
  I've been advising the Hachyderm.io Mastodon instance and helping them diagnose technical issues in their infrastructure. One major part of this has been my contributions to the Mastodon Streaming server, but I've also assisted with releases and moderation tooling.
- Solid (Nov 2021 - Feb 2023)
  Open Source Developer
  Contributed to the Solid project through participation in the specification groups, development of tools and SDKs and interactions on the community forums for the project. (related to my work as an employee of Inrupt during the same time period)
- Mastodon (Feb 2018 - Jun 2018)
  Open Source Developer
  Contributed features improving the trust & safety of Mastodon through the development of new moderation tools, specifically functionality that ensures all moderation actions are logged to an audit log, and give moderators the ability to discuss reports on their instance, and leave notes on potentially problematic accounts for other admins and moderators in the future.
- Ziferblat UK (Feb 2014 - Jun 2014)
  Volunteer
  Helped out around the community space assisting with various tasks. Generally whatever I could do to help out. Included helping setup clear processes for handling end of day reporting (previously it'd be little paper notes, I setup a standard end of day report template to ensure readability and consistency in end of day procedures)
- Node.js (Sep 2009 - Jun 2011)
  Open Source Developer
  I contributed various patches to node.js between 2009 and 2012, including support for WebSockets (needed changes in the HTTP parser & module to support the protocol), introduced the multi-page documentation. Also contributed various fixes to both C++ and JavaScript code, for instance, fixing error handling in the file system module.
  
  You can find my contributions here: https://github.com/nodejs/node/commits?author=miksago (note: they are under a different username to that which I currently use for open source development)

## Languages

- English (native)
- German (elementary)

## Links

- GitHub: https://github.com/thisismissem