Heikki Toivonen

Santa Clara, California, USA
Email: My first name at heikkitoivonen.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/heikkitoivonen/
Skills:

Claude, Codex, Devin, Python, C, C++, JavaScript, Unix shell scripts, SQL, NoSQL, PKI, SSL/TLS, REST, JSON, Flask, SQLAlchemy, MySQL, SQLite, CI/CD, AWS, Docker, Git, Gerrit, Jenkins, Jira, Linux

Professional Experience:

Gamma Tech, Inc., San Francisco, CA

Senior Software Engineer

2026-

Gamma is an AI-native platform for creating presentations, documents, websites, and other visual content, used by over 100 million people.

  • Developed public APIs and corresponding MCP interfaces, including one now driving a significant share of API revenue.
  • Automated MCP documentation with AI that monitors code changes and keeps public documentation in sync.
  • Enabled local MCP App development, eliminating need of staging deployments and speeding iteration.
  • Launched MCP Apps and Slack integrations.

Amazon Lab126, Sunnyvale, CA

Senior Software Development Engineer - Tools

2016-2026

Lab126 is an Amazon subsidiary working mainly on device software and devices like Echo and FireTV.

  • Created an internal open source compliance tool that was used to produce hundreds of open source legal notices and source code tarballs per year. Used AWS Aurora (MySQL), SQLAlchemy, Flask and Python.
  • Optimized existing Python-based service to be 10x faster.
  • Implemented a highly available and scalable public serverless API capable of serving more than 100,000 requests per second. Built with AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), TypeScript, S3, API Gateway and Cloudfront.
  • Added unit tests and local development support to a Python Flask application (MongoDB/DynamoDB), eliminating a shared staging bottleneck and enabling parallel development for a 4-engineer team.
  • Maintained an internal codesigning service that handled about 60,000 requests per day. Written in Ruby on Rails.
  • Improved development processes that affected hundreds of developers, project managers and other stakeholders. Enhanced related tooling to reduce manual effort and errors.
  • Interviewed 100+ candidates for engineering roles, and mentored more junior engineers, including interns.

Quixey, Inc., Mountain View, CA

API Engineer

2014-2016

Mobile search. Switched to devops role in early 2015.

  • Scaled and optimized Python Flask application.
  • Maintained and automated Docker-based Jenkins test and deployment pipelines for hundreds of git repositories and applications.

Egnyte, Inc., Mountain View, CA

Senior Engineer

2010-2014

Egnyte provides cloud storage and sharing services for businesses. Worked as the technical lead for sync, using Python.

  • Scaled the sync system to tens of thousands of simultaneously syncing clients against three data centers, where many customers were syncing over 10 million file datasets of several terabytes in size.
  • Optimized sync algorithm, API, and implementation on client and server side to meet and exceed the speed of competitors.
  • Designed and implemented event polling sync using Cassandra NoSQL storage, which brought sync latency from 15 minutes to one minute.
  • Designed various sync related APIs and algorithms for other engineers to implement, reviewed code and mentored other engineers, QA and support.

SpikeSource, Inc., Mountain View, CA

Senior Staff Engineer

2008-2010

SpikeSource helped companies build, test, distribute, and maintain software products. Developed Python and Java web applications; designed a REST API and Python client for a machine provisioning system; and improved engineering tools, code quality, and developer productivity across the department.

Open Source Applications Foundation, San Francisco, CA

Development Manager

2003-2008

OSAF was a non-profit organization created to build Chandler, a personal information manager. I was the primary cryptography and security engineer, and manager of small distributed team of 1-3 engineers and interns.

Netscape Communications Corporation, Mountain View, CA

Senior Software Engineer / Technical Manager, Software Development

2000-2003

Core engineer on Netscape 6.0–7.1 and the Mozilla browser; owned the XML module and drove browser security initiatives. Led a global team of 6–10 engineers and interns working on web standards and security.

Various Companies, Finland

Various Roles

1993-2000

Designed and implemented Mozilla-based applications using XUL, JavaScript, C++, and SQL, as well as Web and Windows applications using C, Perl, and Visual Basic. Served as a teaching assistant for a university C/C++ programming course.

Projects:
  • Founded a sole proprietorship to create paid and ad-supported Android applications. Hundreds of paid users. 2009-2013.
  • Maintainer of M2Crypto, the most complete OpenSSL wrapper for Python. 3 million yearly downloads. 2004-2013.
  • Created 10+ proprietary and open source projects to learn Django, jQuery, Claude Code, etc. 1000+ downloads per year. 2003-present.
  • Built and launched pythoncomplexity.com, an open-source Python time & space complexity reference, attracting 1,000+ users in the first 30 days in 2026.
  • Contributed code and translations to 10+ other projects, including Python standard library. 2003-present.
  • Volunteered as webmaster for the Finnish Language School of Silicon Valley. 2008-2015.
  • Blogged and wrote articles about Python, Linux and other topics. 1+ million yearly page views. 2007-2016.
Education:

MS (Information Technology), University of Jyväskylä, Finland, 2000.

Computer Science Diploma, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK.

Patents:

System and Method for Event-Based Synchronization of Remote and Local File Systems, US US20140040197 A1. Issued Aug 2, 2013.