Resume

Resume #

Alan MacDougall, Brooklyn, NYC
alanmacdougall@gmail.com
alanmacdougall.com
github.com/amacdougall

For even more detail, visit my professional work page.

You may wish to download this abridged single-page version as a PDF or as a Word document. It’s in resume-speak, but it has the same core information.

Skills #

Engineering management (SDLC, agile, etc)
Full-stack web development
REST API development
Domain modeling and application architecture
Refactoring legacy code into efficient modern systems

Languages and Frameworks #

JavaScript/TypeScript: React.js, Redux, Node.js, GraphQL
Ruby: Rails, REST APIs, scripting
SQL: query composition and optimization
For fun: Clojure/ClojureScript, Python
The distant past: ActionScript, Java, C#, PHP

Experience #

Senior Engineering Manager, Narvar, Jun 2023 — present

  • Lead a team of five developers responsible for Shopify Returns, a reverse logistics application for Shopify
  • Work across time zones and continents to manage a distributed team
  • Work with product and design on initial technical specifications for new projects
  • Refine technical specifications with team developers to produce estimates and milestones
  • Act as the front line to diagnose and assign tickets
  • Work directly with customers as needed
  • Contribute technically on smaller bugs and features
  • Reached across teams to rework a chaotic and failing ticket prioritization process, improving time to resolution by 50% and decreasing status update requests by 90%
  • Delivered multiple CEO-requested experimental integrations precisely on budget

Engineering Manager, SurveyMonkey, Oct 2019 – Mar 2023

Joined when GetFeedback was acquired by SurveyMonkey in 2019.

  • Led a team of five developers responsible for third-party integrations
  • Early on, hired three developers to bring the team to full strength
  • Worked with a product manager and a designer to plan the future of the application
  • We created a new Salesforce integration microservice which ran in a Kafka environment
  • We built a contact database for survey response attribution, with client-side spreadsheet import
  • We helped build a Zendesk integration upon news of a possible merger
  • We maintained and improved our existing Salesforce integration
  • I personally took ownership of the legacy SurveyMonkey Salesforce integration, preserving a significant customer base
  • Management style emphasized stability, medium-term goals, and clear business rationales
  • Fun fact: I was a write-in winner for the engineering division’s “Customer Advocate” award in 2021

Senior Developer, full stack, GetFeedback, Apr 2018 – Oct 2019

  • Small team: I had responsibility for every aspect of the application
  • Many improvements and refinements to the Salesforce integration at the heart of the business
  • Implemented a print-friendly view of one of our main analytics reports; sounded simple until I found myself reading the Chromium source code
  • Wrote a quick and dirty tool to suggest possible fields for univariate segmentation
  • Implemented import and export of spreadsheets for multilanguage translations
  • With a co-worker, created a workflow generation feature
  • With a co-worker, added Twilio as a survey distribution method
  • A lot of backend work to support tax calculation
  • Connected one of our main analytics views to a live-updating object database

Senior Developer, full stack, Paperless Post, May 2011 – Dec 2017

  • Introduced React.js to the company through tech talks and mentorship
  • Architected and developed the card design tool using React.js
  • Guided the overall architecture and technical direction of the design tool
  • Developed the canvas-based card-display module which currently powers every aspect of the core business: desktop web, mobile web, the iOS app, and the image rendering pipeline
  • Designed and updated the underlying database tables, models, and API routes
  • Over 500 Github pull requests worth of features, bugfixes, and refactorings

Senior Developer, The Phoenix Group, 2007–2011

A digital agency in Long Island. Implemented many fascinating interactive marketing experiences. Ask me for some war stories. …nobody ever actually asks me for the war stories, but there are some good ones! Ever heard of SAX?

Freelance Web Developer, 2000–2007

A broad range of contract work. Many tech stacks, many levels. A real education; details available on request. A lot of great stories here as well.

Education #

BFA, Millikin University, IL