My name's Ian MacIntosh, I help great engineering teams perform even better by improving the everyday stuff that makes up the developer experience. I want your team to get traction, maintain focus, and do all the amazing work it was meant to do. Let me help by cleaning up all the time-consuming baggage that your team is way too busy to deal with.
"If you don't actively fight for simplicity in software, complexity will win... and it will suck."— Henrik Joreteg
You'll usually find me:
- Working with DevOps teams to ensure preview environments are quickly and reliably deployed
- Demonstrating good Git habits and showing how to clean up messes without losing all your work
- Identifying opportunities to keep the team's tools and skills aligned with what's available today
- Keeping code reviews moving along with clear feedback instead of getting stuck in In Review purgatory
- Writing documentation that reads like a series of useful tweets instead of a series of classic textbooks
My last titles were "Architect" and "Principal Software Engineer," where I provided the most value giving technical oversight, guidance, and mentoring. But I still like getting my hands dirty with personal projects; it's hard to lead without the understanding you can only get from hands-on experience.
- #️⃣ Scripting: React, Nunjucks, npm
- 🎨 Styling: CSS Grid, Sass/SCSS
- 📐 Testing: Test-Driven Development, Jest, Testing Library, Cypress
- 🚢 Code Management: Git, GitHub, Prettier, ESLint
- 🛠 Utilities: VS Code, Vim, Bash
- ⚙️ Platforms: Eleventy, Netlify, Contentful
- 🚀 Other: Writing docs, studying to be a Git wizard, security/pentesting (OverTheWire, TryHackMe, HackTheBox, etc)
Police, fire, and ambulance phone numbers for 242 countries and territories. No ads, no signup.
- Built to give life-saving information to users as fast as possible
- Accessible for everyone without sacrificing visual appeal, meeting or exceeding WCAG 2.2 AA success criteria
- Secure by default with CSP headers, CORS protection, and HTTPS-only strict transport security (HSTS)
- Tech stack: TypeScript, React, Vite, Cloudflare Workers, Playwright, and Vitest
Instantly convert gasoline prices listed in liters or gallons and foreign currencies.
What started as a simple calcluator blossomed into a passion project. Learn why I wanted to build something great.
- Built with TypeScript, React v18, Vite, and React Router v7 (aka "React Remix v3")
- Super accessible/usable-for-everyone components courtesy of Ariakit
- Unit and integration tests with Vitest
- End-to-End ("E2E") tests with Playwright
TapCount is a utility app (Android | iOS | Web) to help count anything and know how long counting took. I imagined this would just be an exercise app ("How long does it takes to do 100 burpees?"), but you can use it to measure anything where time matters.
- Built with React
- Tested with Jest and Testing Library (81.7% code coverage)
- Transpiled for Android and iOS using Apache Cordova
- Published to Google Play Store
After finishing Wes Bos's premium React course, I built something on my own: a clone of a 1990's console arcade puzzle game. I learned a lot on the way by playing the role of lead developer, designer, sound engineer, project manager, and quality engineer.
- Built with React v16 (like, with classes... and no hooks)
- Unit tested with Jest
- Animated SVGs using Greensock (GSAP)
- Layout managed with CSS Grid
I built my personal site to share knowledge, ranging from technical How To guides to travel advice. I made my site fast, secure, and cheap by using the JAMstack. I made testing and deploying an absolute breeze by taking advantage of modern pipeline tooling.
- Built with Eleventy
- Content managed with Contentful CMS
- Hosted by Netlify
- Pipeline built with Netlify's Continuous Deployment tools, GitHub Actions, Lighthouse CI, and Cypress
- Layout managed with CSS Grid and Flexbox