Zeke Sikelianos
designer, engineer, documentarian
Work History
Replicate
Founding Designer, 2021-Present
Replicate is a platform for building and running AI models. We make open-source tools used by engineers, researchers, and tinkerers to package, deploy, and run machine learning models at scale in the cloud. We're also a community where people share and publish models. As the first employee, I've worked as a designer and engineer to build Replicate's website, model playground, HTTP API, SDKs, demos, and documentation. My focus is on developer experience, creating tools and content that make it easier for people to build things with AI.
GitHub
Staff Software Engineer, 2016-2021
GitHub is where the world builds software. In my five years as an engineer at GitHub, I helped launch Electron, the open-source tool for building desktop apps, which has become the basis for apps like Slack, VS Code, and Cursor. On the Electron team, I internationalized electronjs.org, added Typescript support, and helped manage an active community of international open-source contributors. After Electron, I founded GitHub's first docs engineering team. We launched docs.github.com, internationalized docs.github.com, open-sourced docs.github.com, and co-created the OpenAPI description for GitHub's REST API.
npm
Designer/Developer, 2014-2015
npm is the package manager for JavaScript: a registry of over 1 million 3.5 million open-source "lego blocks" for building applications for Node.js and the browser. For over ten years, npm has been the default tool and registry to publish and consume open-source software for the web. During my time as an early employee at npm, I helped redesign and rebuild the frontend and backend of the npmjs.com website, making it faster, mobile-friendly, and more welcoming to contributors.
Heroku
Product Designer, Open Source Maintainer, 2012-2014
Heroku is a platform that simplifies the process of deploying, running, and scaling web applications. I wore many hats at Heroku, including designer, engineer, product manager, and open-source advocate. I designed and implemented a redesign of addons.heroku.com, Heroku's marketplace for cloud infrastructure providers, as well as other web properties like blog.heroku.com and help.heroku.com. In my last year with the company, I spent most of my time improving the Node.js development experience on Heroku by rewriting the build process, creating the semver.io microservice for resolving Node versions, writing documentation and blog posts, answering support tickets, and representing the company by speaking at conferences and mentoring at meetups.
Wordnik
Designer, Developer, 2011-2012
Wordnik was a startup with the ambitious goal of becoming the world's largest English dictionary, and of course we had an API. I worked with a diverse team of computer scientists and linguists to design, build, and maintain the high-traffic wordnik.com Ruby on Rails web application. I also co-created Swagger and Swagger UI (now OpenAPI), a specification and set of open-source tooling that has become the de facto standard for documenting and consuming HTTP web services.
Fractured Atlas
Designer, Developer, 2009-2011
Fractured Atlas is a national non-profit organization providing services for the independent arts community. At Fractured Atlas I designed, coded, and maintained Rails and Sinatra applications and geospatial webservices using technologies like Postgres, PostGIS, CouchDB, and the Google Maps Javascript and Flash SDKs.
ELC
Developer, 2007-2009
ELC Technologies was a consultancy providing services to Fortune 500 companies in the early days of Ruby on Rails and Amazon Web Services. At ELC, I was introduced to Unix, macOS, Ruby, and cloud computing. I led the development and maintenance of websites for big enterprises, using popular practices of agile web development like pair programming and iterative development cycles.
Ideum
Interactive Director, 2006
Ideum is a small new media outfit working for museums, educational institutions, nonprofit organizations and socially responsible companies. As the Interactive Director at Ideum, I directed the production of educational and humanitarian projects, working with Flickr and Google mashups, building applications using PHP and Python.
Rome & Gold Creative
Designer, Developer, 2002-2006
Rome & Gold Creative was a small branding agency and architectural design studio. I worked as a web designer and junior print designer, building content management systems and shopping carts using PHP and MySQL.
French Government
English Teacher, 2001-2002
In partnership with the French department at the University of New Mexico, I joined a teaching program and moved to L'Isle sur la Sorgue, Provence, France to teach American English language and culture at Lycée Polyvalent Alphonse Benoit.
Neogenesis Media
Guru Factotum, 2000-2001
Neogenesis was a documentary film production house. I worked on post-video editing using Discreet Combustion and Macromedia After Effects, developed interactive CD-ROMs and Flash websites, and built and maintained a Windows network for farm rendering.
Archetypal 3D
Web Designer, 1998-2000
Archetypal 3D was a small group of architectural designers. As a production assistant, I designed websites, worked on IPIX 360-degree photography, and maintained a network of workstations and rendering machines.
Talks
- Design like Karpathy is watching (2025)
- OpenAPI Origin Story: Natural Language Processing Evolution (2024)
- Building an AI artist with Codespaces and Replicate (2023)
- Bridging Systems and Subcultures: A Swagger Origin Story (2020)
- Building thriving open source communities with GitHub
- How I Write Node Modules
- Learning LevelDB
- Electron: keeping an ion it
- Navigating JavaScript Userland
- Electron: Desktop Apps with Web Languages
- Electron and Cross-Platform Desktop Apps
- NodeUp, Episode 87
- Crowdsourcing Heroku's Node Buildpack
Posts
- Introducing LoRA: A faster way to fine-tune Stable Diffusion
- Train and deploy a DreamBooth model on Replicate
- Run Stable Diffusion with an API
- How we open sourced docs.github.com (2020)
- Easier AutoUpdating for Open-Source Apps (2018)
- Functional programming with lodash.chain (2017)
- Electron's New Internationalized Website (2017)
- Announcing TypeScript support in Electron (2017)
- Electron Simple Samples (2017)
- Electron Userland (2016)
- Electron's API Docs as Structured Data (2016)
- npm install electron (2016)
- The Sweet Sensation of Automation
- CSS from the future (2016)
- What's new in Electron 0.37 (2016)
- nicely presented markup (2015)
- npm has a new website (2014)
- Twenty Years with JavaScript (2014)
- The Most Popular npm Packages on Heroku (2014)
- 10 Habits of a Happy Node Hacker (2014)
- Announcing a new and improved Node.js Buildpack (2014)
- Introducing Heroku's Europe Region (2013)
- Presenting the New Heroku Add-ons Site (2012)
Apps
Schooling
- University of New Mexico, 1999-2001
- Santa Barbara City College, 2008-2009
- Ministère de l'Éducation nationale (France), 2001-2002
- Machine Project Information Design curriculum, 2010
- Beaver Brook Building School, 2013