Resume
This is an incomplete list of my professional work experience. For a more comprehensive list of projects I have worked on, see my body of work.
Benjamin Kampmann
Independent Software Architect, Engineer & Product Lead
Lisbon, Portugal
Experience
Jun 2025 – TODAY Zoe
Co-Founder, Lead Product & Engineering
Through our building and marketing Acter3 we’ve learned a lot about what people really need to effectively organize. https://hellozoe.app (and the marketing campaign) is the distilled version of that on a completely fresh and privacy-preserving core infrastructure. It’s key difference: rather than offering its own chat, Zoe connects to your existing chat, e.g. WhatsApp or Signal Group, and allows everyone in there to interact without having to install the App themselves.
· Rust · Zoe Relay backend · Flutter App ·
2009 – today Independent Software Architect & Engineer
GNUnicorn.org
As a freelancer, I have worked on a number of projects. Some are listed here, but you can see a more extensive body of work here.
Nov 2021 – Jan 2026 Acter Association
Before Jan 2023 known as Effektio
Co-Founder & CTO, Engineer- & Product-Lead
With Acter3 (previously Effektio) we were building the next generation of collaborative, mobile organizer on top of Matrix, the decentralized end-2-end-encrypted communication network. I was leading the entire engineering department, including design and product of the App.
During this time I was also the technical Co-Host of the ”{✊} Hack The System” Podcast.
· Rust · Matrix · App · Flutter ·
Feb 2022 – Feb 2023 Element / Matrix
Senior Engineer & Team Lead Matrix Rust SDK
For New Vector/Element I was working on and leading the team behind matrix-rust-sdk, the rust-based core of the mobile Element-based Chat Applications Element-X.
· Rust · Matrix · Infrastructure · End-2-End-Encryption · WebAssembly · FFI ·
Jul 2018 – Jan 2022 Parity Tech
VP of Engineering (interim), Team Lead Substrate Client, Software Engineer, Architect
At Parity I joined the Substrate/Polkadot-Team, where we were building the next generation interoperable blockchain of blockchain and the decentralized stack as the infrastructure for Web3.
· Rust · Substrate · Infrastructure · Polkadot · Web3 · WebAssembly ·
2019 – 2021 radikal*
Co-Founder & CTO, Organiser, volunteer
Radikal* was a new progressive initiative for anti-racism in Germany. Aside from an online publisher for articles and educational material on progressive discourse (like the glossary), we were running a fund to provide access to people from marginalized groups in the political processes in Germany.
· Rust · Docker · Infrastructure · Campaigns ·
2017 – 2019 DEMOKRATIE IN BEWEGUNG
Co-CEO & CTO, volunteer
DEMOKRATIE IN BEWEGUNG was a new progressive movement and political party in Germany. I joined it early on, co-authored its statues and since founding have been leading and programming the product development of our own tools (for participation but also the internal back-office), administrating the technical infrastructure and building the organization and the community as a whole.
· Django · Docker · Infrastructure · Campaigns · Plenum · ProKo ·
2016 – 2019 The Bashy Initiative
Founder, Director
Founder and Director of The Bashy Initiative – taking care of people, who care. The Bashy Initiative is an umbrella organization for projects, services and events to improve the infrastructure of the open source and non-profit communities, with a focus on the needs, mental health and work life of all its people.
As founder and director I transferred some of my personal projects over to the organization, am actively building and creating others as well as spread the word about the initiative.
· AreWeWebYet.org · Clippy-Service · Launchpage ·
Sept 2016 – April 2017 MaidSafe Inc
SDK & API-Lead, Community Evangelist
At MaidSafe I was in charge of designing the APIs, which allow developers to interact with the decentralized SAFE network. As such I remodelled the network-wide data structures to allow for more expansive and scalable workflows and implemented the SDKs for the browser, desktop and mobile SDKs.
Secondly I was giving talks and presentations and facilitated events in order to spread the word and expand the developer and user community.
· Rust · Decentralization · Javascript · Community ·
2016 – 2017 RustFest.eu
Organizer
Together with a few friends, we organized the first Rust conference outside the US (the first ever, just happened 2 weeks before in the US) in Berlin in September 2016. I was part of the organizing team from the very beginning, taking care of everything that was necessary from surveying the venue and discussing with sponsors to ensuring the speakers are taken care of and running the workshops in the Impl day. We repeated the format in Kyiv a year later, which I contributed to but was unable to attend personally.
· Rust · Event Organizing · Volunteering · Community ·
2012 – 2017 OpenTechSchool e.V.
Founder, Chairperson (2013 - 2015), Organizer, Coach
Founding Core Member of the OpenTechSchool Initiative. A volunteer run non-profit, organizing learning events and workshops in coding and tech. As part of the local Team in Berlin, I am helping organizing workshops and other events there, on the global level I am overseeing the technical infrastructure and operations. As part of team blueprint I am working on the bigger picture and the more long-term vision and strategies of the organization.
Chairperson of Board of Directors from 2013 - 2015.
April – Sept 2016 IMMMR
Lead Engineer Core SDK
I joined this communication and messenger startup of Germany’s largest ISP as part of the backend team to restructure and reimplement the backend and database services. Soon after I proposed a structural change to implement the core database replication features on through a cross-platform SDK team which I lead.
· CouchDB · Python · iOS · Android ·
2013 – 2016 Hackership
Founder, Lead-Coach
Born out of the necessity for a more intense programme in OpenTechSchool, Hackership is a 9-week, self-paced learning retreat for developers. It is organised as a non-profit social enterprise. Next to providing education, it is our goal to help foster a more diverse and welcoming tech culture.
As part of the core team, I help formulate our strategy and execute our long-term visions, during batches I lead the coaches and coach learners coach our learners and oversee internal processes and infrastructure. Within Hackership we’ve built the review app and antelope.
· Mentor · Engineer · Founder ·
2015 - 2016 GlückGames
Lead Frontend Engineer, Freelance
Joining this growing casual casino games startup for a few months to architect the first iteration of their in-house-developed HTML5 games with realistic physics engines, high class animations and quick, react-js-based UI updates.
· HTML5 · ReactJS · ES2015 (Babel & Webpack) ·
April - Nov 2015 NewRelic
Architect and Engineer, Freelance
For their externally used Discourse-based support forum NewRelic approach me to develop an Answers & Points plugin for Discourse. Over a the time frame of half a year I lead the specification, design and development of that plugin with the company as well as other subcontractors.
· Discourse (Rails & EmberJS) · Postgres ·
2014 - 2015 WerWeissWas
Chief Architect and Engineer, Freelance
Over the course of one and a half years, I lead the rewrite of Germanys second biggest Question-and-Answer-Community “WerWeissWas.de”, based on a highly adapted Discourse fork. As the chief architect I was responsible to design and implement the system changes for the long-term as well as translate the business requirements into tech specifications the team could implement. As such I was closely working with non-technical and technical personal alike.
· Discourse (Rails & EmberJS) · Postgres ·
April - August 2014 Thermondo
Backend Engineer, Freelance
Joining this growing startup as a backend engineer for their internal process management and delivery tool, I was responsible for implementing specific Business and Sales-cases on the Django-Rest PostgreSQL-backed Software stack.
· Django · Postgres · React ·
2012 - 2013 Crowdbet
Founder, CTO
As the technical co-founder my primary responsiblity was to build and run the crowdbet betting platform, overseeing the market maker and develope the product further. Aside, I was also helping out with fund-raising, company strategy and business development. .
· Flask · SocketIO · Postgres · Angular ·
2012 - 2013 Gapbird
Software Architect and Engineer, Freelance
Designed and implemented a full-featured crowdfunding platform for hollywood movies and high end series. As the key developer I was responsible for the entire Web-Platform from the Django backend to Javascript frontend, as well as managing the project from specifications over design to implementation.
· Django · Postgres · jQuery ·
2011 - 2013 Club der Beschleuniger
Founder, CEO
I cofounded Club der Beschleuniger, a collective (Genossenschaft) of software developers, who help startup set up and execute their business ideas by providing technical knowledge, expertise and hands-on coding.
· Founder · Project Manager · Engineer ·
2009 - 2012 Prozentor
Software Engineer, Product Manager
I joined to help get a big client project out of the door, but throughout took over more project responsibility, rebuild the entire release and quality assurance process. Among others, here I started my first in-house startup, socialism.
· Pyramid · Oracle DB · jQuery ·
2007 - 2009 Fluendo Embedded
Software Engineer
I joined a team of three in Barcelona, to build an open source set-top-box multimedia center – similar to the AppleTV – called Moovida. As a generalist I was building as much frontend as I was designing and building architecture in the backend of the framework.
· Python · SQLite · GStreamer ·
2006 - 2007 Stiftung Eben Ezer
Civil Service
I served my civil service as a teacher at an elementary school for mentally disabled kids.