Matt Gawlik

The Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) is part of Canada's contribution to the James Webb Space Telescope. I developed software and test automation and executed system test plans while the instrument was under operational test conditions. This means it was in a vacuum chamber and held at extremely low temperatures. I was also the primary representative from the software team to work on-site at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

Releases of our flagship cloud-based platform were proving to be inconsistent. Scheduling and cadence were ad-hoc, making planning difficult for both customers who didn't know when to expect a fix or feature to land and engineering teams who could not reliably schedule feature work. I developed a new process and schedule that allowed us to plan for three major releases a year and minor monthly updates. Under the new plan, teams are less likely to need to crunch for a minor release as the next one is just a month away and can reliably scope and schedule their features around a more consistent primary release timeframe. The customer support center is also better able to set expectations regarding a timeline for fixes, resulting in improved confidence in the platform.

Customers and external stakeholders had begun inquiring about our plans for a piece of legacy software that was in maintenance mode. I was asked to facilitate a week-long remote design sprint with some of our company leadership to help determine a path forward. In that week, we successfully defined a problem, created a prototype of what a refreshed version of the product could look like, and showed it to customer stakeholders. The response was very positive and proved the viability and value of integrating these concepts into our flagship platform.

One of Canada's major federal political parties held a vital leadership election and utilized Dominion Voting precinct count and central count tabulators to count the ballots. As a product manager for those products, I was on-site on the day of the convention to provide support and expertise and instill confidence in the reliability of the overall process. I worked with stakeholders from all levels of the party to successfully mitigate issues that threatened to put the results into question. Ultimately, we delivered an election result that showed another candidate had defeated the perceived frontrunner.