Michael Melanson, Software Developer in Ottawa, ON, Canada
Michael Melanson

Software Developer in Ottawa, ON, Canada

Member since February 22, 2021
Michael is a software developer with several years of professional experience which includes building features and developing teams at Shopify and Amazon. Technically, Michael is extremely capable with robust knowledge of Ruby on Rails and React along with exemplary communication skills. Michael has also made some notable open-source contributions, including Shopify’s Liquid templating engine.
Michael is now available for hire

Portfolio

  • Clearco
    Ruby on Rails (RoR), TypeScript, Architecture, Technical Leadership, Go...
  • Copper
    Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), JavaScript, Ember.js, Git, HTML, APIs, REST APIs...
  • Shopify
    React, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), GraphQL, Shopify...

Experience

Location

Ottawa, ON, Canada

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Ruby on Rails (RoR), Rust, TypeScript, React

The most amazing...

...project was at Shopfify when I worked on an internal hackathon with a team and prototyped a new Liquid template renderer as a bytecode virtual machine.

Employment

  • Staff Software Engineer

    2021 - PRESENT
    Clearco
    • Designed and implemented a Stripe-based invoicing system for one of the company's new product initiatives.
    • Joined the company's Architect's Chapter as a founding member, helped establish the group's mission of improving the engineering culture at Clearco, and presented the first proposal to the group.
    • Designed and re-architected a major redesign of the external account integration system responsible for ensuring the company's adjudication process has a reliable data stream for producing accurate capital offers.
    Technologies: Ruby on Rails (RoR), TypeScript, Architecture, Technical Leadership, Go, Web Development, Software Architecture, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Google Cloud Storage, SQL, JSON, Protobuf, gRPC, RabbitMQ, Apache Kafka, Full-stack, Stripe
  • Full-stack Staff Engineer

    2021 - 2021
    Copper
    • Wrote an API change policy to govern the evolution of the company’s APIs. This policy created a consensus on the team around how to evolve the API, leading to streamlined planning of upcoming features.
    • Planned a transition from weekly releases to continuous delivery, which will greatly speed the company’s release cadence. The plan is approved by leadership and is scheduled for Q3 of this year when I will lead the transition.
    • Designed an adaptive flow control algorithm based on TCP/IP congestion control to govern the ingestion of data from Sherlock (a newly acquired company) into Copper’s systems, enabling Copper to complete a major milestone in Sherlock’s acquisition.
    • Improved greatly the observability of the company’s Webhook delivery jobs for our operations and support teams. This has dramatically improved our support team’s ability to diagnose Webhook delivery issues.
    Technologies: Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), JavaScript, Ember.js, Git, HTML, APIs, REST APIs, PostgreSQL, Technical Leadership, Web Development, Software Architecture, Architecture, CSS, HTML5, SQL, Object-relational Mapping (ORM), JSON, Microservices, RabbitMQ, Full-stack
  • Senior Web Developer

    2018 - 2020
    Shopify
    • Built and shipped several features, including leading the web development for purchase orders.
    • Managed and led the web development work of a project to port the transfers feature to React.
    • Mentored and onboarded team members to create the inventory web team as a founding member.
    • Managed an intern developer until their early promotion to full-time developer.
    • Built the parser/compiler of a prototype virtual machine-based Liquid renderer; this new engine is now in production and showing 4-10 times performance gains. My work "blew [the] mind" of the Shopify CEO.
    Technologies: React, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), GraphQL, Shopify, CSS, Git, HTML, APIs, Node.js, MySQL, Technical Leadership, Web Development, Software Architecture, Architecture, HTML5, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Google Cloud Storage, SQL, JSON, Full-stack
  • Software Development Engineer II

    2016 - 2018
    Amazon.com
    • Implemented incoming message and call notifications to iPhone users of the Alexa application. As a critical component of the core experience, my code executes at least several million times per month with few defects and operational issues.
    • Led a project to transition the communications features of the Alexa application to React Native to allow faster iteration on a single codebase for iOS and Android.
    • Reduced unnecessary pages on the team's on-call practices by implementing suppression triggers—improving quality of life for on-call engineers by reducing night-time pages.
    Technologies: iOS, Swift, Objective-C, React Native, TypeScript, JavaScript, Java, REST, Git, Amazon Web Services (AWS), APIs, REST APIs, Technical Leadership, SQL, JSON, Microservices
  • Principal Software Applications Developer

    2015 - 2016
    Entrust
    • Served as a lead developer of IntelliTrust: the company's cloud-based authentication and authorization platform; designed the system’s service-oriented architecture and implemented its inter-service communication framework.
    • Designed and led the implementation of the project’s React-based front end.
    • Implemented a multi-tenant SAML identity provider that was capable of federated authentication with Google Apps, Office 365, Salesforce, and other SAML Service Providers.
    Technologies: Java, Swing, React, Amazon Web Services (AWS), APIs, REST APIs, Software Architecture, Architecture, CSS, HTML5, SQL, JSON, Microservices, Full-stack

Experience

  • Riscy
    https://github.com/michaelmelanson/riscy

    A software implementation of a RISC-V processor. It passes the compliance tests for the base instruction set and over 90% of compliance tests for three of the most common extensions. It can execute simple programs compiled via GCC and Selfie, a simple RISC-V compiler for C.

  • Pinhole
    https://github.com/michaelmelanson/pinhole

    The web is great, but it was designed around showing hyperlinked documents. What if the web technologies were designed primarily for applications instead of documents and with the benefit of hindsight?

    This project implements a custom TCP-based network protocol, a server-side application development framework, and a desktop client.

  • Unnamed Kernel
    https://github.com/michaelmelanson/kernel

    This project involved implementing the basic features of an operating system. I've written components such as UEFI loading, PCI discovery, physical memory management, heap allocation, system calls, graphical output, and partial support for disk access in this and other projects.

Skills

  • Languages

    JavaScript, TypeScript, GraphQL, HTML, HTML5, Java, Ruby, Swift, Objective-C, Rust, CSS, SQL, C++, Go
  • Frameworks

    Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ember.js, React Native, Swing, gRPC
  • Libraries/APIs

    React, Node.js, REST APIs, Protobuf, Stripe
  • Tools

    Git, RabbitMQ
  • Paradigms

    REST, Object-relational Mapping (ORM), Microservices, RISC-V
  • Storage

    JSON, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Google Cloud Storage
  • Other

    Software Development, APIs, Web Development, Full-stack, Architecture, Technical Leadership, Software Architecture, Cognitive Psychology, Neuroscience, Simulations
  • Platforms

    Shopify, iOS, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Apache Kafka

Education

  • Bachelor of Computing Degree in Computer Science
    2004 - 2009
    University of Guelph - Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Certifications

  • Amateur Radio (Advanced Qualifications)
    MAY 2002 - PRESENT
    Industry Canada

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