Rupert McKay

(He/Him) Delft, Netherlands

Staff Software Engineer at Lokalise

Email:
rupert@rupertmckay.com
Website:
www.rupertmckay.com
Download CV (pdf)

About

I am a motivated multidisciplinary staff software engineer with over 10 years of professional experience. I have worked closely with high-profile clients and gained both deep and broad expertise. My roles have included full stack development, software architecture and team leadership. I am a firm believer in collaboration across product, design and development domains. I can work alone, but am most valuable as a multiplier to others. I am passionate about clean code, test driven development and mentoring others.

Experience

Staff Software Engineer

Lokalise

Apr 2022 - Present

Staff Engineer: Frontend Strategy

Laid the scaffold for a green-field project with AI at the heart. Establishing a framework which can be scaled to many more developers. Championed migration from styled-components to CSS modules.

Technologies: TypeScript, React, Turborepo, Fastify, Vite, React-Query, Zod, Wretch, CSS Modules, ChatGPT, GPT-4

Staff Engineer: Extensibility Tribe

Mentored and multiplied the productivity of the whole Extensibility Tribe. The Tribe's goal was to create and maintain the tools necessary to ensure third-party developers could directly integrate with Lokalise's APIs. Champion for frontend performance and monitoring initiative in which we improved page load times from several seconds down to only a few hundred milliseconds.

when thinking about the "Exceeding expectations" level ... you were the one person that came to my mind.

Technologies: TypeScript, React, styled-components, Fastify.

Senior Software Engineer

adidas

May 2021 - Apr 2022

Checkout user experience and payment integration: .COM Checkout and Payment

Technical lead for the adidas lower funnel checkout and payment experience. Inter-team champion for TypeScript, Jest and Testing Library. Lead initiative for TypeScript upgrades across entire adidas.com codebase. Delivered biweekly technical talks to all .COM teams on broad range of topics.

I am very fond of your teaching and testing ... you are a role model for me

Technologies: React, TypeScript, Jest, Webpack, Adyen, ACI.

Lead Developer

DotControl

Nov 2020 - May 2021

All-encompassing marketing content platform: DPG GROW

Team lead for an ambitious MVP web platform. Managed client expectations and scope. Established Agile best practices and lead the development team in both frontend and backend. Enhanced developer processes leading to a near doubling of team velocity.

Technologies: Umbraco

E-commerce platform rebuild: DPG Media

Architected and lead development on the frontend, while collaborating with the backend team to ensure a performant user experience, even while handling volatile user traffic spikes coming from a huge customer base across the Benelux. Eliminated server downtime with cloud scaling and Azure deployment slot swapping.

Technologies: Next.js, TypeScript, React, Jest, Storybook, Umbraco Heartcore,

Ethical commodity sourcing platform: SourceUp

Took over team leadership shortly after MVP release. Championed reduction of tech debt and refactoring to better ensure long term maintainability and product quality. Dramatically reduced page load times by a factor of 10.

thanks for all the feedback, positive vibes and lessons you taught me

Technologies: Next.js, TypeScript, React, Jest, GraphQL.

Senior Software Development Engineer

Expedia

Feb 2020 - Nov 2020

Single page application and API: Agency Tiers

Coordinated with Product and Design to lead development of a full stack application to handle the automation of a previously file-intensive manual process.

Technologies: TypeScript, Jest, React.

Web Platform Localization: Portal TAAP Compatibility

Took complete leadership from conception to delivery of providing localization support languages across a SPA web platform. Enabled lazy loading locale selection without requiring full page load. During this time received the 'Spirit Award' for embodying the Expedia core principles:

Rupert speaks his mind on difficult topics when he knows it is best for the team... actions things both big & small... has an attitude for saying 'yes'.

Technologies: i18next, React.

API Migration: Monolith to Kumo

Refactored and streamlined the team's existing AWS lambda node API templates to make use of Webpack, Babel and ES6 support. Established baseline for best practices in future APIs.

Technologies: AWS, Lambda, Webpack, ES6, Babel.

Professional Development Expert

Softwire

Jan 2018 - Jan 2020

Apprenticeship training department: Softwire Academy

Won awards for my patient, caring and empathetic approach to mentoring junior developers. Prepared students for British Computing Society exams in C#, JS, and Methodologies. Taught courses in C#, Java, JavaScript and Python.

Senior Software Engineer

Softwire

Jan 2017 - Jan 2018

Various projects

Took on increased responsibility on a number of projects. Handled direct daily client communication of timelines, feasibility and planning.

Technologies: JavaScript, Neo4J, C#, ASP.NET MVC, Python, Durandal, Cordova.

Software Engineer

Softwire

Jan 2015 - Jan 2017

Various projects

Worked with many high-profile clients including the BBC and David Lloyd gyms. Established expertise in a broad range of languages and technologies.

Technologies: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Angular, KnockoutJS, Java.

Software Engineer

IPL

Sep 2013 - Jan 2014

Financial market data analysis web application: ORX

Technologies: C#, SharePoint.

Education

University of Bath

Bachelor of Science with Honours - Computer Science

2010 - 2013

Grade: First-class honours

  • Departmental Prize for Contribution to the Development and Life of the Department
  • Outstanding Contribution Award
  • Achievement Award

University of Warwick

Mathematics and Economics

2007 - 2009