Resume for Shaun McQuaker

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) 

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 – small multi-functional team reporting directly to VP of Growth
  • IC contributing to technical coding, data analysis, cross-functional project lead on a small high-performance team
  • Accomplishments
    • Merchant SEO
      • developed customized SEO crawl / audit tool for merchant stores
      • developed Shopify app for quick application / reversion of SEO title optimizations
      • found opportunities > $2M gross profit for company
    • Research and Insights
      • how Google assesses value of internal links
      • reverse engineering of Google AI overviews
      • SEO impact of AI generated descriptions on Shopify merchant stores
      • developed SEO enterprise playbook
    • Automated Reporting / Tooling
      • Title / H1 / Anchor Text optimization tool
      • SEO Health Dashboard
      • SGE scraper / rank tracker
    • Mentoring
      • SEO guidance to internal teams
      • advisor to core SEO team

2024 – Present  DailySearchVolume.com 

  • Founder
  • Launched service providing daily search volume to SEO analysts

2023 – Present  PortfolioAI.com 

  • Co-Founder
  • Responsible for tech development and traffic acquisition
  • Accomplishments
    • Signed up 40 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.
    • organized 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

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.

Reported directly to Elon Musk during the formative years of SpaceX. Elon continues to use him as a mentor on major projects he starts.