# Ryan Dahl

> Ryan Dahl is an American software engineer who created Node.js in 2009 and later co-founded Deno with Bert Belder. His work spans server-side JavaScript, developer tooling and machine learning. In October 2026, he announced that the Deno team was joining Cloudflare, where he and Belder would lead an effort to make the Workers programming model easier to self-host.

- **Role:** Leading a self-hosted workerd initiative at Cloudflare with Bert Belder; co-founder of Deno
- **Organizations:** Cloudflare, Deno Land Inc., Joyent, Google Brain
- **From:** San Diego, United States
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Mathematics studies, University of California, San Diego, Doctoral studies in mathematics, focused on algebraic topology; left without completing the PhD, University of Rochester
- **Known for:** Created the Node.js JavaScript runtime., Co-created Deno, a JavaScript and TypeScript runtime with an explicit permissions model and integrated tools., Co-founded Deno Land Inc. with Bert Belder.

## Career timeline

- **2009** — Introduced Node.js at JSConf EU in Berlin; subsequently worked on the project at Joyent.
- **2012** — Handed operational leadership of Node.js to Isaac Z. Schlueter.
- **2017** — Worked at Google Brain; his personal site lists a June 2017 Google Brain Residency post.
- **2018** — Presented his Node.js design regrets at JSConf EU and introduced Deno.
- **2020** — Deno 1.0 released on May 13.
- **2021** — Announced the Deno company with Bert Belder and $4.9 million in seed capital on March 29.
- **2022** — Announced a $21 million financing round led by Sequoia on June 21.
- **2023** — Explained the addition of package.json support to Deno.
- **2024** — Deno 2 released October 9 with Node.js and npm compatibility.
- **2026** — Announced October 9 that the Deno team was joining Cloudflare; Dahl and Belder would lead an effort to improve workerd self-hosting.

## Achievements

- Created the Node.js JavaScript runtime.
- Co-created Deno, a JavaScript and TypeScript runtime with an explicit permissions model and integrated tools.
- Co-founded Deno Land Inc. with Bert Belder.
- Helped build the team behind JSR, the cross-runtime JavaScript and TypeScript registry.
- Contributed to open-source infrastructure including HTTP Parser and libuv.

## Latest updates

- **2026-10** — Dahl announced that the entire Deno team was joining Cloudflare. He and Bert Belder would lead work to combine celld ideas with workerd and improve self-hosting.
- **2026-10** — Announced one further year of monthly Deno runtime fixes and security updates, six further months of Deno Deploy operation, and continued JSR operation with infrastructure moving to Cloudflare.

## Links

- Website: https://tinyclouds.org/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/rough__sea
- GitHub: https://github.com/ry
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/tinyclouds.org

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/ryan-dahl
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-26