Django Wexler was born in New York on January 13, 1981. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh with degrees in computer science and creative writing, and before embarking on a full-time writing career conducted research on artificial intelligence for Carnegie Mellon and was a programmer for Microsoft in Seattle. Wexler's first novel, Memories of Empire, was published in 2005. His second, Shinigami, God of Death, was released the next year.

2013 saw the publication of the first in Wexler's noted The Shadow Campaignsseries, The Thousand Names. The Shadow Campaigns novels are early and prominent examples of the literary subgenre that has become known as 'flintlock fantasy' or 'gunpowder fantasy', that is, fantasy narratives that do not inhabit the traditional sword-and-sorcery medieval European analogues but instead are set in worlds more culturally and technologically reminiscent of 18th and early 19th-century Europe and America. In this subgenre, alongside the gods, magic and unworldly creatures of traditional fantasy stand early modern technologies such as cannons and flintlock rifles. The Shadow Campaigns follows the adventures of several individuals (many of them soldiers) living in the Vordanai Empire, a rough fantasy analog to the 18th-century British Empire. There are five novels in the series, including The Thousand Names, The Shadow Throne, The Price of Valor, and The Guns of Empire, as well as several short stories. The final volume, The Infernal Battalion, was released in 2018.

In 2014, Wexler released the first of a fantasy series for young adults, The Forbidden Library .The novel and its three sequels tell the story of young Alice, who lives with her uncle Geryon and discovers her ability to enter into the magical realms contained within books in her uncle's massive and mysterious library. Wexler also wrote another well-received YA fantasy series between 2019-2021: the Wells of Sorcery trilogy, a saga of mysterious warriors, ghost ships, and travels to strange new worlds. His latest book is the epic science-fantasy Ashes of the Sun, published by Orbit in 2020.

Wexler has also published a number of works of short fiction, including the story "The End of the War", which achieved 2nd place in the 2016 Asimov's Readers Poll for Best Novelette; the Star Wars story "Amara Kel's Rules for TIE Pilot Survival (Probably)"; and the 2021 Tor.com novella Hard Reboot.

Wexler currently resides in Washington State.