Email: nathan@shively-sanders.com
Github: sandersn
I am a senior software engineer with 15 years of experience building compilers plus developer tools and 4 years of experience building AI developer tools. I have a Ph. D. in computational linguistics, a field of AI.
I’ve worked on just about every part of the Typescript compiler, with a focus on Javascript. If you have edited a .js file, you probably used my code.
These days, I am at the center of the change to AI-powered software engineering. I’m working to make sure that AI in VS Code, Copilot CLI and other Microsoft products contains my years of Typescript expertise, along with those of my team.
Microsoft, Typescript team.
AI-powered refactors: Add AI-powered refactors to VS Code for Typescript, then to multiple languages.
Agent-powered dependency updates: Add Typescript support to Github Copilot App Modernization; evaluation of results to track progress.
Training examples: Contributed to benchmarks like SWE-Bench and other training; improving coding agents and code completion models.
Tool prototypes: Prototyped AI tools for the Typescript team, such as an AI-powered PR triager.
Microsoft, Typescript team.
Typescript refactors native port (2026): Prototyped AI-powered refactors and traditional refactors powered by the new, native compiler for Typescript; mentored teammates to productize it.
Typescript compiler native port (2024-2025): Rewrote Javascript/JSDoc support for the new, native Typescript compiler.
Typescript on the web (2022): Gave github.dev / vscode.dev access to the full Typescript compiler.
Community and education (2020–2023): Ran PR triage and review for external contributors—almost 700 PRs in 4 years. Created a training compiler, produced training videos, published Typescript’s early design notes.
Shifted the team to reviewing twice as many external PRs as internal PRs.
Definitely Typed (2018–2024): Improved the publication pipeline for @types packages on npm. Built watchdog infrastructure to stabilise the service. Trained new team members to run Definitely Typed. Measured real-world Typescript adoption, tracking typed-package coverage as it rose from 50% to 90%.
At Definitely Typed’s peak, the community plus one team member on rotation merged almost 24 PRs per day, every day.
Javascript support (2017–2019): Support Typescript type-checking in .js files via JSDoc tags, expandos, and CommonJS support.
Language features (2015–2016): Implemented object spread/rest and this parameter types.
Microsoft, SCOPE Data Processing Language on COSMOS.
Bing Infrastructure, then SQL group.
SCOPE is a SQL dialect for massively parallel computing. Shipped externally as U-SQL running on Azure Data Lake.
For a complete, chatty history of all my projects see my Full CV.