Senior Software Engineer
British Columbia, Canada
ianlamb32@gmail.com
Senior Front-End/Full-Stack Engineer with a knack for building elegant web interfaces. 10+ years of experience delivering a variety of solutions in enterprise environments. Effective and pragmatic leader for small teams. UX/DX enthusiast.
Senior Software Engineer @ Airbnb
Canada (Remote) | August 2024 - Present
Data Management Frontend Engineer
- Developing advanced internal data management tools to enable search & discovery of data assets, lineage exploration, and management of data governance, retention policies, etc
Senior Software Consultant @ Test Double
Canada (Remote) | June 2022 – June 2024
Client: ZipRecruiter
- Developed features for the high-traffic job search experience with a cross-functional team that heavily utilized data science and AB testing to validate improvements.
- Implemented and championed a new design system component library used across the organization for higher productivity and UI consistency.
- Mentored junior engineers on writing clean and composable React, UI testing best practices, etc.
- Set standards and best practices for the engineering org and improved front-end tooling to increase developer experience and code quality.
Senior Software Engineer @ Improbable
Canada (Remote) | January 2020 – May 2022 (2 years)
Tools & Interfaces Tech Lead
- Led and mentored a small cross-cutting team that builds front-end web tools for development operations and customers-alike to manage game services.
- Organised online presence and pair programming routines to integrate and connect distributed team members.
- Established UI development practices to ensure UX consistency across a suite of admin panels.
- Collaborated with back-end engineers to develop the login and administrative experiences for a player auth and identity provider, enabling cross-platform gameplay and account-linking. Over 1.5M accounts were created through this system during Scavengers Early Access.
Game Services Engineer
- Orchestrated and deployed an in-game chat service using Ejabberd/XMPP that scaled to 20k real CCU. Performed load tests to validate a theoretical capacity of 100k CCU with horizontal scaling implemented.
- Developed a game-specific real-time multiplayer lobby service in TypeScript/Node that scaled to 20k CCU using WebSockets and Redis Pub/Sub.
- Architected a real-time event service that allows pre-scheduled events to automatically re-configure a live-service game.
- Improved developer experience by making auto-generated API docs, establishing version/release protocols and configuring CI/CD pipelines with Buildkite/GitHub Actions.
- Deployed services to Kubernetes clusters and managed AWS infrastructure with Terraform.
- Setup service metrics and alerts using Prometheus and Grafana to monitor service stability and troubleshoot live-ops issues.
Senior Software Engineer @ Blizzard Entertainment
Irvine, CA | January 2016 – January 2020 (4 years)
- Architected and implemented features of a React-based WYSIWYG website builder that blended the usability of a designer tool like Figma with the power of data-driven components. This tool was used to launch several production websites, cutting development costs significantly and empowering designers to execute their own vision.
- Developed and shipped a re-imagination of the BlizzCon website, which handled peak CCUs over 200k and featured live-stream integration and a highly time-sensitive, self-updating event calendar. This was one of the first mobile-first designs implemented on a Blizzard site and the first to be run on AWS/Node.
- Built a highly reusable and themeable style guide and component library that enabled faster development of Overwatch-related experiences while maintaining brand consistency.
- Introduced the team to React and Next.js to meet the demanding interactivity and performance requirements of our esports websites which featured live streams, schedules and data-rich resources such as players, teams, matches, stats, etc.
- Integrated non-scalable data sources (data APIs, CMS) with our public-facing sites, building proxy APIs and utilising caching layers to handle the large CCU spikes we would get during events and game announcements.
- Improved webpack development pipeline and built web components with Preact for the StarCraft: Remastered in-game UI.
- Demonstrated the potential cost-efficiency of AWS Lambda/API Gateway by converting a low-traffic beta opt-in service from dedicated hosting, reducing running costs to coffee change while maintaining speed and availability.
London, ON | June 2014 – December 2015 (1.5 years)
- Designed and developed a JavaScript web framework for Android browsers that allowed video and image content to be presented to in-store customers as an interactive experience for learning about a product.
- Developed features in a suite of Java microservices that managed a scalable network of devices (tablets), enabling operational functions like remote content delivery, reboots, heartbeat monitoring, etc.
- Wrote automated system tests that ran through every step of the software lifecycle from spinning up databases with seed data to running Android VMs and interacting with services, increasing release confidence and driving down regressions.
London, ON | January 2013 – June 2014 (1.5 years)
- Led a sizable effort to redesign the club management system used by employees at over 300 locations. As well as refreshing the look and feel to be on-brand, we migrated away from VBScript which enabled clubs to upgrade their systems.
- Developed a digital, stream-lined 14-day Trial Membership sign-up which had a measurable increase in customer acquisition by lowering the barrier for first-timers to get into the fitness clubs.
Waterloo, ON | May 2012 – August 2012 (4 months)
- Developed a tablet-optimised web app for managing config settings for SlipStream's compression proxy client.
- Performed debugging and analysis in a C++ based socket library.
London, ON | September 2011 – December 2011 (4 months)
- Developed features and fixed bugs on the core client-facing website built with Ruby on Rails.
- Learned about modern development methodologies and tools such as Agile Scrum, CI/CD and Git SCM.
London, ON | December 2010 – April 2011 (4 months)
- Developed a secure patient portal for capturing data in medical studies (JavaScript, PHP/CodeIgniter, MySQL).
- Met with stakeholders to gather requirements and provide progress updates on the project.
Computer Programmer Analyst @ Fanshawe College
London, ON | September 2009 – December 2012 (3 years)
Ontario College Advanced Diploma
President's Honour Roll Recipient