I own how
engineering
ships.

Director of Software Engineering at Unqork. I led two platform teams, then took the delivery practices that worked there and rolled them out across all of engineering. Today I own the SDLC and engineering operations for an organization of 53, including the AI team and the new IDE. Twenty years in software, ten of them leading engineers.

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Ian MacDowell, Director of Software Engineering
Years Leading Engineers
Engineers on the SDLC I Own
The Build Time on Our Last Major Launch
Of That Launch’s Bugs Caught Before Release

What I run today

As Director I led two platform teams. Then I took what worked there and rolled it out across all of engineering. It was a lateral move with fewer direct reports and a much wider scope: I now own the SDLC and engineering operations for an organization of 53, including the AI team and the new IDE. Inbound demand from customer-facing teams and DevOps comes through me, so it doesn't land on engineers or on engineering leadership.

Unqork · Release & Delivery

A Platform Launch in a Third of the Time

Our new IDE release shipped the same scope as the previous builder launch in about a third of the build time. It went through the standard SDLC with a QA gate and reached four times as many customers on first rollout. QA caught 87% of bugs before release, up from 59%. Errors per environment in the first two weeks fell from 3.8 to 1.1, median bug fix time dropped from 14 days to 2.1, and no rollback reached production. I own the SDLC it shipped through, coordinated the delivery program and the release, and built the pentest environment it was tested in.

Release Coordination QA Gate 87% Caught Pre-Release
Unqork · AI Rollout

AI Environments, On Schedule

I run intake and rollout for Unqork's customer and internal AI environments: model configuration, keys and feature flags, with AI rollout gated by phase. Over six months the median time to enable was 3.8 days. In the busiest month, with inbound demand well above any month before it, the median fell to 2.4 days. I also own the cloud AI account, with budget alerts and cost-anomaly monitoring on every AI project.

AI Rollout Phase Gating AI Cost Monitoring
Unqork · Developer Experience

A Shorter Path to First PR

Developer experience moved under me in August: onboarding automation, the documentation hub and CI runner visibility, all aimed at a shorter time to first PR. Access across source control, cloud and AI coding tools runs through the same team, so new engineers and contractors aren't left waiting. Most requests close within two days.

Developer Experience Onboarding CI Visibility
Unqork · Governance

Vendors, Cost and Compliance

I manage engineering's contractor and tooling portfolio day to day, covering onboarding, delivery, renewals and invoice review. I built the first cost baseline for our CI runners, which now drives a savings-plan decision and our next cloud commitment. A vendor security review got critical pen-test findings fixed before renewal. I also own feature flag governance, the SOC 2 SDLC controls and the cost-capitalization data Finance uses for audits.

Vendor Management Cloud Cost SOC 2 Controls

What I own

Each area has an outcome I'm accountable for.

  • SDLC and delivery operations: one way of shipping across all of engineering, with SOC 2 controls built in.
  • Release and delivery coordination: predictable releases, with escalations closed out.
  • AI environment rollout: customers get AI on schedule and engineers stay on product work.
  • Developer experience: faster ramp for new engineers and contractors, and visibility into CI.
  • Security readiness: pentest and security-regression environments, plus vendor security reviews before signing.
  • Vendors and cost: contractor and tooling spend under control, and cost baselines behind our cloud commitments.

Leading two platform teams

As Director I led two platform teams with up to 17 direct reports. Four results from that stretch, and one from argodesign.

Unqork · Delivery

Rebuilt How the Company Ships

Moved Unqork from six-week rolling releases to a quarterly cadence that runs security, legal, compliance, finance, QA, release management and engineering through one process. P1 incidents dropped 43%. Release acceptance went from 73% to 91%. I wrote the SDLC documentation from commit to production and the policy behind it.

SDLC Design Release Governance 43% Fewer P1s
Unqork · AI-Assisted SDLC

12 Weeks Against a Six-Month Estimate

I introduced Vertex-powered Claude into Unqork's SDLC and brought design, product and technical writing into GitHub. The first team shipped in 12 weeks what had been estimated at six months, and the work still passed internal and external pen tests and accessibility review with full test coverage. Several teams adopted the approach. I also built an internal agentic system for meeting tracking and reporting that is rolling out across the company.

AI-Assisted SDLC Claude on Vertex Agentic Workflows
Unqork · AI Programs

Enterprise AI, Alpha to GA

I ran Unqork's AI programs from Alpha through Beta and EAP, with oversight into GA, and shipped the company's first production generative AI features to paying enterprise customers. The Alpha went live in multiple enterprise customer environments at once, so architecture readiness, legal agreements and deployment orchestration all had to land together.

Generative AI Enterprise Launch Alpha to GA
Unqork · Architecture

Versioning for a Platform With No Files

Everything in Unqork's platform is structured data in MongoDB, and applications had no real versioning. Customers moved apps between environments and couldn't tell why they behaved differently afterward. I led the team that built the platform's first application versioning system. We ruled out Git because it would have created a second source of truth beside Mongo, and built a manifest-based model inside the existing data architecture. Migration integrity across environments came back.

Architecture MongoDB Platform Integrity
DreamWorks Animation · argodesign

One App Became a Design System

DreamWorks asked for a single application. I built the design language system first and the app on top of it. The system went on to power four applications, and DreamWorks adopted it as their own standard.

Design Systems Platform Leverage 1 Ask, 4 Apps

Earlier client work

Eight years at argodesign, building the technology practice from zero to 15 engineers. Some of the work:

  • Blaize AI Studio: directed the technology behind an AI modeling interface. Good Design Award.
  • IBM / Red Hat: a multicloud management marketplace.
  • United Rentals: digital transformation of the construction equipment rental experience.
  • Sam's Club: associate and customer experience tools deployed inside stores.
  • Lane Splitter: a concept car that splits into two motorcycles. Covered by Fast Company, New Atlas and Designboom.

Also: Nike, MasterCard and Converse at R/GA. Samsung and Chrysler at argodesign. Burton's cross-brand responsive eCommerce platform, which won three FWA awards and became an Adobe case study.

Still hands-on

I still build things myself, mostly with coding agents.

AI Product

ContextCanvas.ai

Design the lifecycle your coding agents follow: stages, owners and gates in one versioned blueprint, exported to files Claude Code enforces. Before building a second version, I set up a test of whether to narrow it into an open-source review layer. The results said no, so I didn't build it.

contextcanvas.ai →
Open Source

FlowGauge

Opinionated GA4 for people without an analyst. An MCP server and a Claude skill that read your site's traffic and write a short decision memo on what to fix next. Apache-2.0, installs straight from GitHub.

View on GitHub →
Agent-Run Brand

Unicorn Graveyard

A dark-fantasy 3D-print brand. I design the models. Agents build and run the storefront and keep the catalog in sync.

unicorngraveyard.com →

More on GitHub →

How I make decisions

The rules I actually use.

"Return on Time"

Every decision asks someone to spend time, whether that's a user in a product or an engineer in a process. I look at what they get back. If a manual task costs four hours a month and automating it costs eight, it pays for itself in month three.

Discover, design, deliver

I've taken 50+ projects through the full cycle, from discovery through design to delivery. Eight years inside a design consultancy taught me that discovery and design are engineering work. Hand me a spec that skipped both and I'll go back and do them.

Servant leadership

My job is to make my team's job easier. I clear blockers and give context. When something is ambiguous, I take it upward so the team doesn't have to carry it.

"What gets measured gets managed"

Intuition works for design. Operations needs data. Before we start, I want to know how we'll measure whether it worked.

"Ask why three times"

The first answer is usually the symptom and the second is the mechanism. By the third you're close to the root cause. Most teams stop at one, so I push for the other two before anyone starts fixing.

Process serves the problem

Process exists to solve a specific problem. When it stops solving that problem, I change it or remove it. I wrote Unqork's SDLC, so I know what process costs a team.

"Always seeing things differently"

College thesis on AI in 2006. A concept car that splits into two motorcycles. Adjunct professor. Eight years in a design consultancy before running platform teams.

The path

Most recent first.

2022 – present
Manager → Director of Software Engineering
Unqork, enterprise no-code platform
Joined in August 2022 managing seven engineers and was promoted to Director in March 2024. As Director I led two platform teams with up to 17 direct reports, ran Unqork's AI programs from Alpha toward GA and introduced its AI-assisted SDLC. I then moved laterally to own the SDLC and engineering operations across all of engineering, including the AI team and the new IDE. I also manage engineering's contractor teams and tooling vendors.
Engineering Operations Developer Experience AI Rollout SDLC & Release Vendor Management
2014 – 2022
Founding Technologist → Technology Director
argodesign, design and technology consultancy
Joined as the founding technologist and built the technology practice from scratch. Directly managed a team of five to eight engineers from 2016 and grew the practice to 15. As Technology Director I led 15 senior engineers across concurrent client engagements for DreamWorks Animation, Microsoft, IBM / Red Hat, Sam's Club and United Rentals, with P&L participation on scoping, staffing and delivery budgets.
Practice Builder Leading Engineers Since 2016 15 Engineers Good Design Award
2012 – 2014
Senior Open Standards Developer
R/GA
Production work for Nike, MasterCard, Converse, L'Oréal and LiveStrong. Taught a SXSW Interactive 2014 workshop on building web apps with Angular.js.
Nike MasterCard SXSW Instructor
2009 – 2012
Web Developer → Technical Lead
Burton Snowboards
Promoted from Web Developer to Technical Lead within 16 months. Led the move to responsive eCommerce across a cross-brand platform covering Burton, Analog, Gravis and Channel Islands. Three FWA awards and an Adobe case study. Taught as an adjunct professor at Champlain College in 2011 and 2012.
eCommerce 3x FWA Awards Adjunct Professor
2007 – 2009
Senior Developer (Flash)
Dealer.com
Built a dynamic media system deployed to 7,000+ dealer websites across the US and Canada on an enterprise automotive SaaS platform. Projects for Chrysler, Jeep, Acura and Subaru.
Enterprise SaaS Multi-Tenant 7K+ Sites
DreamWorks Microsoft Nike Converse MasterCard L'Oréal LiveStrong Samsung IBM / Red Hat Sam's Club United Rentals Jeep Chrysler Acura Subaru Burton Blaize

What I work with

Highlighted tags are where I spend most of my time now.

Operations & Leadership
Engineering Operations Vendor & Contractor Management Cloud Cost Management Managing Managers Org Design Hiring & Interviewing Engineering Metrics Executive Communication
Delivery & Governance
SDLC Design Release Coordination Developer Experience Access Management SOC 2 SDLC Controls Feature Flag Governance Security Readiness CI/CD Incident Response
AI
AI Environment Rollout AI Cost Monitoring AI-Assisted SDLC Agentic Workflows LLM Integration MCP Servers RAG Evals
Platforms & Engineering
GitHub Org Admin GCP IAM & Billing AWS Jira & Jira Product Discovery TypeScript Python React Node.js

Education & Recognition

B.S. Computer Science, Champlain College

Web Development concentration. College thesis on Artificial Intelligence (2006). I also hold an A.S. in Multimedia & Graphic Design.

Industry Awards

Good Design® Award as Technical Director for Blaize AI Studio. Three FWA awards for Burton, including Site of the Day and People's Choice. Adobe case studies for Burton and argodesign.

Speaking & Teaching

Adobe MAX speaker in 2011. SXSW Interactive workshop instructor in 2014. Adjunct professor at Champlain College, where I developed and taught the 2D Digital Motion Graphics curriculum.

Eagle Scout

Boy Scouts of America.

Where I do my best work

Engineering operations, developer experience or AI enablement leadership at a company that builds with AI. I do my best work when I own the systems around the engineers, so the teams can ship.

If that sounds like your team, my resume and calendar are below.

Director of Engineering Operations Developer Experience & Productivity AI Enablement Engineering Effectiveness Remote (US) Hybrid or on-site: Austin, TX
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Let's talk.

Email or a 30-minute call is the fastest way to reach me.

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