# Lachlan Donald

> Lachlan Donald is Buildkite’s co-founder and CTO, a former CEO and COO of the developer-tools business, and the founding CTO of 99designs. An early Buildkite investor and open-source contributor, he returned to its technical leadership after engineering roles at Block and Groq. He is based in Victoria’s Alpine Region.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CTO at Buildkite
- **Organizations:** Buildkite, 99designs, Block, Cash App, Groq, Glow
- **Education:** RMIT
- **Known for:** Founding CTO of 99designs., Early investor, co-founder, former COO and CEO, and current CTO of Buildkite., Helped secure Buildkite’s A$28 million Series A in 2020.

## Career timeline

- **2010** — Identified as 99designs CTO in an AWS announcement; also a member of the Australian Codaroos team that won FullCodePress.
- **2013** — Returned to Melbourne after three years with 99designs’ American team in Silicon Valley.
- **2016** — Buildkite credited Donald and the 99designs engineering team with open-sourcing the initial Elastic CI Stack for AWS.
- **2018** — Authored Buildkite’s Agent v3.0 announcement.
- **2020** — As Buildkite CEO, participated in its A$28 million Series A led by OpenView with General Catalyst.
- **2021** — Announced his departure from Buildkite in March; Glow announced his appointment as a CTO adviser in July.
- **Between Buildkite tenures** — Held senior engineering roles at Block/Cash App and Groq.
- **2026** — Announced his return as Buildkite CTO in January.

## Achievements

- Founding CTO of 99designs.
- Early investor, co-founder, former COO and CEO, and current CTO of Buildkite.
- Helped secure Buildkite’s A$28 million Series A in 2020.
- Contributed with the 99designs team to the initial open-source Elastic CI Stack for AWS.
- Member of the Codaroos team that won FullCodePress 2010.

## Latest updates

- **2026-01** — Announced he was rejoining Buildkite as CTO after engineering work at Block/Cash App and Groq.
- **2026-10** — His public GitHub gists include an October 9 prompt advocating removal of low-signal unit tests in favour of tests that catch real bugs.

## Links

- Website: https://lachlan.me/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lachlandonald
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/lox
- GitHub: https://github.com/lox

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/lachlan-donald
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-20