Martin Kleppmann Portfolio
Author of Designing Data-Intensive Applications, one of the most widely read backend/distributed-systems books of the last decade, and a Cambridge academic whose site links peer-reviewed papers, conference talks, and the Automerge open-source CRDT project for local-first software.
What makes it work
A breakdown of the choices that make this portfolio stand out.
A single site unifying book, papers, talks, and open-source code
Rather than scattering a book's companion material, academic papers, and a maintained open-source project (Automerge) across separate platforms, everything routes through one personal site — making it easy to see the throughline from research to book to shipped code.
Publication list with real venues, not just a blog roll
Listing peer-reviewed placements at EuroSys and IEEE TPDS alongside blog posts signals a level of rigor that a blog alone doesn't — useful for anyone building credibility as a specialist rather than a generalist.
An open-source project that embodies the research
Automerge isn't a toy demo — it's a maintained CRDT library people actually build local-first apps on, which turns the academic research into something a working engineer can go use immediately.
What Backend Developers can take from this
Specific, actionable tips to apply to your own portfolio — no generic advice.
If you've written a book or paper, link the runnable code or open-source project that came out of it — theory paired with an artifact is more convincing than either alone.
List your publications with actual venue names; specificity about where work was reviewed and accepted carries more weight than "published research."
Keep talks, papers, and code in one place instead of scattering your body of work across a dozen platforms with no single index.
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