I am a driven team leader with a deep technical background who thrives on solving interesting opportunities with small, highly motivated teams. I have worked in tech for over 20 years and have a proven track record as a software engineer, manager and director. I have developed a well rounded skill set in the development and growth of products, projects and people.

Education

2005 – 2007  Carleton University (MCS) 

• Completed Master’s Degree in Computer Science.
• Thesis on Concept Knowledge in a Referral Network.
• Teaching Assistant for undergraduate Computer Science classes.

2001 – 2005  Carleton University (BCS) 

• Highest Honours for Bachelor of Computer Science.
• Minor in Psychology.

1994 – 1999  Almonte and District High School 

• Graduating Honour Student in Algebra Geometry, Calculus, Finite, English, Chemistry and Physics.

Employment

March 2022 – Present  Shopify

• Senior Growth Lead, Growth Labs – reporting directly to Chief Growth Officer
• IC contributing to technical coding, data analysis, cross-functional project lead on a small high-performance team
• Accomplishments
  • research and insights
    • how Google assesses value of internal links
    • reverse engineering of Google SGE
    • SEO impact of AI content
    • developed SEO enterprise playbook
  • automated reporting / tooling
    • Title / H1 / Anchor Text optimization tool
    • SEO Health Dashboard
    • SGE scraper / rank tracker
    • Developed merchant SEO audit tool
  • mentoring
    • SEO guidance to internal teams
    • advisor to core SEO team

2023 – Present  PortfolioAI.com 

• Co-Founder
• Responsible for tech development and traffic acquisition
• Accomplishments
  • Signed up 24 subscribers with no marketing efforts.

2011 – Present  TheBallparkGuide.com 

• Co-Founder, CTO & CMO
• Responsible for tech development and traffic acquisition
• Accomplishments
  • 75% YoY average revenue and traffic growth for 5 years.

2010 – Present  StockApp

• Co-Founder, Developer, Researcher, Trader
• Creator, developer and administrator of a proprietary stock back-testing, researching, dashboarding and notification platform.
• Accomplishments
  • implemented and integrated a ML framework that employs a genetic algorithm for successfully trading optimal stock patterns.
  • self-sustaining stock trading system that pulls over 3,000 data sources daily and produces an operational trading dashboard.
  • several proprietary tools that present novel ways to trade in any market.

May 2020 – March 2022  Shopify

• Senior SEO Lead, SEO
• Responsible for leading Content, Technical and Markets SEO teams.
• Senior lead of the International SEO team responsible for organic traffic growth in international markets.
• Accomplishments
  • found SEO wins totalling 20%+ YoY traffic growth.
  • formed and led 3 teams within SEO.
  • led weekly performance meetings with senior growth leadership.
  • principal PM on development of several in-house SEO tools.
  • personally developed 10+ SEO MVP tools for the team.
  • organised and automated the content schedule and moved the team to keyword first approach.
  • provided SEO guidance, knowledge, education and insights to teams throughout the company.

Feb 2020 – May 2020  Tripadvisor

• Associate Director, Traffic Acquisition
• Functional lead for OnSite Monetization group.
• Responsible for strategic vision and management of a cross-functional team focused on growing revenue across Tripadvisor.
• Accomplishments
  • formulated, presented and kicked-off a roadmap for site-wide monetization at Tripadvisor.

2017 – 2020  Tripadvisor 

• Technical Manager, Traffic Acquisition
• Led team responsible for SEO tools involved in big data analysis, reporting and tracking on various SEO metrics.
• Led team responsible for SEO monetization
• Accomplishments
  • successfully led SEO Monetization group to beat expectations by 100% with over $24M incremental annual revenue over 2 years.
  • led cross-functional team in developing a Tripadvisor Chrome extension with over 80,000 active users.
  • increased chrome extension installation rate 12x via incremental testing.
  • produced strategic and proprietary research via Chrome extension data and experimentation.
  • responsible for leading and organising the strategy, ideation, and roadmap for project managers and engineers on SEO monetization.
  • managed creation of Google SERP collection tool that reduced cost by 90%.

2012 – 2013  KeepHerHappy.ca

• Lead developer and SEO strategist for online flower subscription service.
• Accomplishments
  • signed up over 60 subscribers and 200+ orders
  • developed a profit neutral business.
  • pitched to Heather Reismann, CEO of Indigo.

2011 – 2017  Tripadvisor 

• Senior Software Developer, SEO
• Developer and administrator for many SEO Tools, including:
  • a complete suite of proprietary tools for tracking Google SERP intelligence – used many times to identify issues and opportunities.
  • a time-series graphing tool named TripMix used company wide to investigate, diagnose and research.
  • a custom dashboard creator to easily monitor KPIs.
  • an external link tracking database and tool.
  • a URL inspector tool to quickly view core data for any page on Tripadvisor
• Accomplishments
  • progenitor, creator and maintainer of over 20 company critical data sources in TripMix.
  • led the integration of 4 Tripadvisor acquisitions into the core SEO tool suite.
  • led SEO project for finding better alternate names for hotels.
  • led SEO project for finding SEO wins in the Japanese market.
  • completed and developed automated research for finding SEO opportunities across international markets by assessing SERP data

May 2006 – 2011  TripAdvisor

• Intermediate Software Developer, Travelpod
• Full-stack developer for two award winning websites, TravelPod and Tripwow
• Responsibilities
  • website and database development.
  • extensive ORM, MVC and OOP development.
  • worked across all aspects of the website’s user-facing products and fixed back-end and front-end bugs.
  • responsible for organic traffic acquisition of Tripwow.
• Accomplishments
  • developed core elements of the Travelpod hotel directory that was the main revenue source for Travelpod.
  • integrated an image uploader for faster photo integration in blogs – a major pain point of travel bloggers.
  • grew SEO and YouTube traffic from zero to represent 30% of total traffic for Tripwow.
  • developed automated video upload and transcription process to scale youtube video creation
  • developed automated directory of slideshows based on combining user generated content from TravelPod

May 2005 – Nov 2005  Symbium

• Junior Software Developer
• Program coder / debugger for IT service management application.
• Created windows disk cleanup utility in C.

June 2003 – March 2004  Department of National Defence

• Change Management Officer
• Contributed to the guidelines for Project Management and Change Management Processes in DND Enterprise Application Environment.

May 2002 – Sept 2002  Alcatel Networks Corporation

• Junior Software Developer
• Creation and administration of online scripting catalogue.
• Database design and interface programming with TCL.

June 2000 – June 2001  Alcatel Networks Corporation

• Junior Software Developer
• Website administration and creation with HTML and JavaScript.
• CGI application programming with Perl and TCL.
• Administered and programmed Berkley and Informix databases.

June – Sept 1998  Newbridge Networks Corporation

• Junior Software Developer
• Designed and administered a corporate web page using HTML, Perl and JavaScript.
• Created web page graphics with Adobe Photoshop.

June – Dec 1997  Newbridge Networks Corporation 

• Junior Software Developer
• Designed and coded a power-tool report generator for network testing scripts.
• Extensive use of UNIX, C, Motif, TCL/TK, and X- Windows.
• Developed inter-relational and presentation skills.

Publications

• White, T., McQuaker, S. & Salehi-Abari, A. On the importance of relational concept knowledge in referral networks. Artif Intell Rev 29, 287 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-009-9141-6
• White, A, McQuaker, S. (Shawn), & Abari, A.S. (Amirali Salehi). (2009). Using relational concept knowledge to improve search in referral networks. In Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS (pp. 1302–1303). https://www.sain.ca/publication/abariPDFS/AAMAS2009.pdf
• McQuaker, S. Relational Concept Knowledge in Referral Networks. Carleton University, 2007. https://people.scs.carleton.ca/~arpwhite/documents/honoursProjects/shaun-mcquaker-winter-2005.pdf

Technical Talent

MySQL / postgresql / HIVE / Presto / BigQuery

• Extensive use of SQL and hands-on knowledge of DB administration.

Machine Learning / Sklearn

• Intermediate knowledge of SKLearn and ML algos.

PERL

• Advanced knowledge of PERL and LAMP stack. 

Python

• Extensive use of python and pandas.

CSS / Javascript / JQuery / Bootstrap / HTML

• Extensive use of web-based technologies. 

Java

• Working knowledge of core Java language.

C and C++ / Assembler

• Working knowledge of C/C++ programming languages and assembler.

Visual Basic 

• Applicable knowledge of Visual Basic. 

Tcl/TK 

• Intimate knowledge of Tcl/TK core programming language.

Managerial Talent

• Mentored by and direct report to Luc Levesque – VP at Tripadvisor, Facebook and Shopify
• Completed leadership course at Shopify
• Professionally coached for over 2 years
• Led cross-functional team of over 20 people at Tripadvisor
• Led teams of up to 8 direct reports at Shopify
• Personal blueprint and team values available upon request

References

• Available upon request.