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Justin Poehnelt

Justin Poehnelt

Founder & CTO, Helen's Foundry

Founder and CTO at Helen's Foundry since May 2026, with a decade of experience bridging machine learning foundations and modern agent infrastructure. Previously at Google and Descartes Labs.

Background

I'm the founder and CTO of Helen's Foundry. Google fired me in April 2026. I have a decade of experience bridging deep machine learning foundations with modern agent infrastructure, including work as a Senior Developer Relations Engineer at Google on the Google Workspace and Google Maps Platform teams and as a Founding Engineer at Descartes Labs.

Recently, I architected the open-source Google Workspace CLI in Rust—built entirely via AI agents—which hit 20k+ stars and #1 on Hacker News. My background spans building petabyte-scale Kubernetes architectures, engineering visual search engines over billions of satellite images, and developing full-stack embedded Rust IoT firmware with custom LoRa mesh networking for endurance races.

Before Google, I worked with geospatial data at Descartes Labs and the U.S. Geological Survey, building data platforms and working with satellite imagery at scale.

At Helen's Foundry, I lead the core build: the bitemporal graph architecture, verification engine, and MCP integrations.

Open Source

I'm a maintainer and contributor to several open-source projects across the Google ecosystem and beyond:

Featured

  • googleworkspace/cli — Google Workspace CLI built in Rust via AI agents (20k+ stars, #1 on HN)

Google

Personal

Speaking & Content

Beyond Code

When I'm not coding, I'm usually running long distances in the mountains of Colorado. I've completed 35+ ultramarathons including multi-day events like the Moab 240 and Cocodona 250. Notable results include 1st at the Ute 100 50-miler, 2nd at Creede 100, and 2nd at Deadman Peaks. I serve on the boards of the Falls Creek Ranch Association and Falls Creek Wildlands and Trails.

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