Shopify

Product Lead

Senior Product Manager

Angel Investor

Active:
* Aquaeye by Vodasafe
* Evalyze
* EverBond Interface Technologies
* HDAX Therapeutics
* Healthy Hippo
* Intellijoint Surgical
* KaleMart24
* Kenota Health
* MesoMat
* Mirsee Robotics
* ORA Graphene Audio
* OrderEase
* Pontosense
* Quip Medical
* Steadiwear
* ToroMatcha
* Trampoline.ai
* Vena Medical
* VoxCell BioInnovation

Completed:
* Little & Lively - Dead

Golden Triangle Angel Network (GTAN)

Vice Chair Board of Directors

GTAN is the #1 Seed Stage Private Investor in Canada.

Board Member

Grobo Inc.

Founder and CEO

Entrepreneur, Product Manager, Advisor & Angel Investor with experience building strong products and companies.

Bjorn Dawson

Director of Engineering

In my current role as a Senior Development Manager at Shopify, I lead the charge in creating high-impact teams and pioneering tools that reshape commerce:

• 🔨 Built and nurtured a high-performing organization of 50+ engineers (80+ RnD-wide), cultivating an ownership-first culture promoting boundary-less collaboration.

• 📚 Guided leaders in implementing influential programs, such as a unified on-call program enhancing system understanding and reducing team stress, or a systems-first approach to management to scale our org efficiently.

• 💪 Coached leads in forming strong opinions, effectively selling their ideas to senior stakeholders, and fostering an environment that prizes initiative and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

• 🚀 Strategically positioned Shopify's custom data tools in the market, evolving this system into powerful platforms that surpass basic content management or data storage.

• 🛠️ Orchestrated the continued expansion of Shopify's Custom Data system, Metafields and Metaobjects, revolutionizing how merchants tell their stories and manage their businesses, all while accelerating 1P & 3P development teams.

• 🎥 Directed the media team's prioritization to high-impact projects like emergent media formats (JXL, AVIF), commerce-specific image tuning, and critical API enhancements.

Senior Development Manager

As a Development Manager at Shopify, I spearheaded ambitious initiatives,  instigated platform-wide changes, and fostered a culture of relentless innovation:

• 💌 Developed the Bulk Account Inviter and its APIs, empowering merchants to invite millions of customers to their store, thereby boosting customer engagement.

• 💱 Pioneered the introduction of multi-currency, overhauling every monetary model in Shopify for global compatibility, laying the groundwork for the Shopify Markets product.

• 🎲 Led several strategic bets within Shopify Plus. Despite not meeting expectations, they exposed platform gaps that I later addressed with Metafields and Metaobjects as a Senior Development Manager.

• 🚀 Orchestrated the operational excellence of the launch of shopify.plus, enabling cross-functional collaboration for a successful rollout across 10+ teams with deeply intertwined products.

• ⚙️ Engineered the Destinations service, a system that accurately and rapidly identifies user access. This service powers inter-system navigation and is relied upon by 30+ services within Shopify.

• 🧭 Kick-started work across admin navigation, search, and notifications. This work began the shift to a more customizable and user-focused admin, while ensuring that critical alerts are never missed by merchants.

Development Manager

Senior Developer

Developer

Boltmade

At Boltmade, we provide professional software development services, paired with elite engineering teams specializing in web, mobile, and cloud services. We empower great companies to deliver fantastic products. Our clientele varies from early-stage startups to established enterprises with complex requirements. Boltmade was eventually acquired by Shopify.

Here are some highlights of my time at Boltmade, reflecting my commitment to delivering excellence:

• 🚀 Empowered clients by building their confidence in agile methodologies, mentoring them for continued success in product development, and customizing agile techniques to match their unique growth trajectories.

• 🎯 Set technical strategies for various projects, tailored technology to project constraints and goals, and enhanced products by improving code quality, reducing code complexity, and optimizing DevOps tools for quicker product development and deployment.

• 💡 Contributed to Boltmade's cultural growth by co-authoring the company handbook, encapsulating our distinct agile approach, and co-chaired the fun committee to foster a vibrant and supportive work environment.

• 🌍 Had a significant impact across eight diverse projects, from new ventures to team augmentation for Fortune 500 companies. I championed robust development practices and agile methodologies, thereby empowering teams and creating enduring advocates for Boltmade's approach and values.

Demeure

Championed a credit system to facilitate property trades within the marketplace.

Mentored co-op students while working within the team to meet our sprint goals.

University of Waterloo

Responsible for Math, Engineering, and Applied Health Sciences faculties orientations. Jointly mentored the newly formed Cross-Campus team.

Mentored, managed, and coached the 32 Federation Orientation Committee members in developing a successful Orientation week program for over 5500 new students.

Developed and maintained working relationships with several external companies and partners while seeking sponsorship and large ticket orders.

Orientation Programs Assistant

Marsh

Architected and implemented a RESTful authentication and user lookup service in Java.

Developed an AngularJS front-end for Spring Batch administration.

Housing, University of Waterloo

Researched data analysis tools. 

Developed an internal C# MVC application for tracking and developing student volunteers.

Desire2Learn

Designed software patterns and standards for transition to new framework.

Created new features in existing Desire2Learn framework with C# to reduce end-user labour costs.

Communicated effectively with team members to ensure proper understanding of project details.

Performed an agile procedure of code design, implementation, and testing in two-week sprints to ensure quality of product.

Created the Software Architecture and High Level Design for the Event and Resource Administration system to be implemented over the next several years.

Specified user requirements, sub-system breakdown, class structure and responsibilities, testing strategy, and development platform.

Developed proof of concept code for a dynamic form building tool in ASP.NET MVC 2 C# with over 120 unit tests.

Intermediate Developer, Student Life Office

Collaborated with managers and coworkers on several individual and group projects, including work on a new Information Architecture for internal documentation, and a rebuild of internal time-tracking software.

Technical Support Technician - Dana Porter Library

McDonalds

Strengthened interpersonal skills by meeting the needs of challenging clients in a high
volume environment 

Coordinated effort with other customer care specialists to provide fast and courteous
service to patrons 

Demonstrated flexibility in the workplace environment by constantly adapting to new
equipment and processes

Customer Care Specialist

Sr. Development Manager at Shopify. Digital-first advocate. Co-author of uncertaintybook.ca. Helping teams be their very best ❤️.

I’m Jesse, an engineering leader with a passion for solving complex challenges and empowering teams. From startups to big tech, I’ve led by sweating the details, building trust-first cultures, and staying technical. As a digital-first advocate and author of uncertaintybook.ca, I’ve spoken on navigating change and building resilient teams. I’m dedicated to helping communities for builders—like DevHouse and startupbarn.ca—and I love supporting startups however I can. Reach out and let’s see what we can do together. 

taplio

The Battle

Bjorn Dawson

Jesse McGinnis

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