Software Development Engineer
Amazon Web Services
JD van Staden
I’m JD. I’m a software engineer based in Cape Town, currently working on EC2 at AWS.
I like learning languages and building small tools that help people learn. I also listen to a lot of podcasts, write occasionally, and have recently started experimenting with robotics.
Work
Dec 2025 – Present
Software Engineer
Entelect (First National Bank)
Tech Graduate
Old Mutual Investment Group
Hablemos
I started programming and learning Spanish around the same time in 2020. Through a Spanish–English Discord community I was part of, I got the opportunity to build a bot for the server.
The first version had one basic conversation feature. As the community grew, so did the bot. I added games, moderation tools, and other features based on what people actually needed. It eventually became something thousands of people used every day.
It was the first thing I built that real people depended on, and it taught me more than any personal project could have.
Side projects
Elsewhere
I sometimes write about software and whatever else has my attention on the blog. You can also find me on GitHub and LinkedIn.
Connect
The best way to reach me is by email.