Chris Castle


Chris is a software developer with over a decade of experience in both individual contributor and leadership roles, including stints in Product Management and Developer Relations. He has worked up and down the tech stack, from browser-based progressive web apps to embedded integrated circuits.

He currently runs crc.works, a small software consulting and freelancing company. Previously, he led Developer Relations at Render and Heroku (Salesforce).

Chris has a deep interest in hardware and more specifically the combination of hardware + SaaS. This interest led him to form an IoT startup in 2015. A snapshot of this work is at https://ctrl.industries.

He also loves working outside. Combining technology and the outdoors is even better. Outdoor roles that he has previously held include ski patroller, avalanche and snow safety instructor, and bicycle mechanic.

Chris particularly enjoys intellectually challenging problems and thrives on learning:

  • He was an early Linux adopter, using Red Hat Linux v7 for his daily use laptop in 2000. Around the same time, he was asked by Apple hardware engineers for assistance debugging one of the first consumer wireless access points.
  • He taught himself electrical engineering fundamentals so that he could design, build, and program a battery powered cellular sensor that included a small camera and relied on computer vision to convert analog gauge readings to digital values.
  • Along with some coworkers, Chris built a tech and sensor-laden kegerator which measured temperature and flow rate, managed access with RFID cards, and communicated with a Node.js API and website running on AWS. He was invited to present about this project at CascadiaJS in 2012.

Chris can be found as crcastle on both and .