Keanan Koppenhaver

Developer advocate and technical generalist


A developer relations professional and technical generalist with 8+ years of experience building and growing developer communities through strategic content, hands-on demos, and authentic engagement. Proficient in Python, JavaScript, and PHP with extensive experience building production applications using LLM APIs, particularly Claude. I combine deep technical credibility with strong communication skills—having spoken at industry conferences for nearly 10 years—to bridge the gap between complex AI/ML concepts and diverse developer audiences. Passionate about responsible AI development and committed to ensuring powerful AI tools are deployed ethically and safely.

Experience

Developer Relations Lead, Retool; Remote — October 2025 - Present

- Leading builder-focused video strategy on YouTube to drive developer engagement and product adoption

- Engaging directly with developers and builders across LinkedIn, Twitter/X, and other social platforms

- Responsible for content strategy and execution for 2nd AI Build Week, attracting 1000 attendees across the half-week event

Technical Product Marketing Manager, Retool; Remote — February 2024 - October 2025

- Led product marketing for Retool's Agents launch, coordinating cross-functionally with EPD and teams across the company

- Created and ran the first AI Build Week, Retool's most successful webinar series to date with 2000 attendees

- Established internal AI Office Hours program running weekly to upskill the entire team on AI capabilities within and beyond Retool

- Produced video assets that drove significant sales-qualified opportunities as reported by the sales team

- Ran near-monthly webinars achieving some of the highest registration counts per session in company history

Developer Advocate, Airplane; Remote — Mar 2023 - Dec 2023

- Owned the content strategy for the Airplane blog, creating ~25 pieces of original technical and tutorial content

- Supported the migration and integration of ~200 acquired content pieces from the ContainIQ blog

- Produced video demos and was the technical advisor on written content for Airplane's first-ever launch week

Writer, Draft.dev; Remote — 2020 - 2023

- Completed over sixty 1500-word technical written pieces for clients across topics including engineering management, DevOps, and specific technical implementations

- Published extensive content on LLMs and generative AI for Retool blog and personal publication FloorboardAI

- Asynchronously worked with editors to capture the voice of the client and emphasize key points prior to publishing

Writing Samples:

- Why Python 2 Will Never Die

- The Case for Granular Permissions

- Chef vs. Docker for Builds and Deployments

- Incident Management Best Practices

- How to select and highlight text in rich text editors

Co-Founder and CTO, Alpha Particle; Chicago, IL — 2017 - 2023

- Grew agency from inception to nearly $500k in yearly revenue through developer relations activities in the WordPress community

- Managed and code-reviewed work from a dev team of 3 (full-time hires and contractors), ensuring code quality and best practices

- Directed and completed projects for diverse clients from large publishers (RollingStone.com, Variety.com) to small businesses

- Built WordPress development solutions and custom integrations for enterprise clients

Technical Architect, doejo; Chicago, IL — 2016 – 2017

- Advised development teams on multiple projects across the entire agency on technical strategy and execution based on individual clients' needs

- Worked directly with the sales team to align sales goals, targets, and language with realistic capabilities of the agency’s technical team

- Frequently attended industry conferences to form agency-level partnerships and present our work more broadly

- Mentored junior developers and upskilled dev teams

Other Experience

Speaking

- Nearly 10 years of public speaking experience at industry conferences on topics including software development, GenAI, developer best practices, and platform-specific demos

- Recent talk at Neo4j's NODES 2025 conference: "Building an AI Air Traffic Controller Agent using LLMs and Graph Databases"

Education

Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, IL — Economics Major, Computer Science Minor, 2014

Skills

Python, JavaScript, PHP, HTML/CSS, AI/LLMs, Claude API, WordPress, Public Speaking, Video Production, Developer Community Building, Project Management, Technical Sales, Technical Writing