Frederick, MD · 864-221-2405 · rory@rorymcdaniel.info
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rory-mcdaniel
Senior Full-Stack Engineer with a passion for Business Technology and Developer Experience. Specialized in building robust internal tools and streamlining complex workflows to increase team productivity. Experienced in designing secure, scalable systems and translating business needs into effective technical solutions.
September 2022 – Present
SME and lead contributor on clinical scheduling systems, driving refactors and Developer Experience improvements across the organization.
- Led the initiative to create the official Django Conventions guide for Headspace, a comprehensive coding standards resource designed to significantly improve developer productivity and experience. Actively solicited feedback from staff+ engineers and leadership, ensuring the guide iteratively evolved to meet diverse organizational needs and foster successful adoption across the engineering team.
- Anticipated risks to upcoming business initiatives and successfully advocated for a critical refactor of the clinical scheduling system to prevent blockers. Executed this roadmap item by optimizing high-traffic systems deployed across multiple ECS Fargate instances, reducing median response time from 4.5s to 1s and P95 from 15s to 2.5s, enhancing system reliability for future growth.
- Led a full redesign of authentication for secure clinical notes, directly addressing clinician pain points by replacing a cumbersome GraphQL-based 2FA system with Okta-integrated JWTs. Introduced JWT minting at the GraphQL gateway layer and downstream verification with AWS KMS, eliminating user friction and enabling a seamless, secure login flow. This initiative resolved daily login issues and significantly improved usability for 100% of clinicians, ensuring operational continuity and adoption.
- Contributed to the design and implementation of async job queues for business-critical e-prescription data migration, building a distributed system that reliably processed sensitive records across multiple services. Ensured high accuracy and on-time completion before vendor contract expiration, underscoring a commitment to reliability and project delivery.
- Leading an initiative focused on elevating developer experience through thoughtful internal tools and streamlined workflows. Designed and built an automated onboarding script that significantly reduces setup time from hours/days to minutes, creating a more intuitive and efficient process for new engineers. Additionally, optimized local Docker Compose database import time from 6 hours to 30 minutes, directly improving daily productivity for the development team.
November 2021 – September 2022
Modernized high-traffic financial APIs and led internal platform improvements to boost developer velocity.
- Modernized legacy Laravel APIs and decoupled frontend logic across high-traffic lead processing systems, handling thousands of mortgage applications daily. This initiative iteratively improved system reliability, maintainability, and testability, ensuring continuous operation of business-critical services.
- Built internal tooling using Lando to standardize local development environments, directly addressing developer friction caused by setup inconsistencies. This initiative reduced onboarding time and improved team productivity, creating a more seamless and efficient workflow for engineers.
- Introduced a headless CMS to decouple content management from deployment cycles, empowering marketing teams with greater autonomy for content updates. This improved workflow reduced developer involvement and accelerated marketing turnaround, reflecting an iterative approach to enhancing business processes.
- Iterated on and refined Datadog dashboards and alerting systems to enhance real-time visibility into application health. This continuous improvement enabled faster diagnosis of latency issues and system errors, contributing to operational excellence and improved system reliability.
- Integrated AWS Textract to automate file parsing, significantly improving the reliability and efficiency of document-based workflows. This initiative contributed to operational excellence by streamlining processes and reducing manual effort.
June 2020 – November 2021
Led platform modernization and CI/CD automation while serving in dual roles as backend engineer and scrum master.
- Led infrastructure modernization by migrating legacy codebases to new Laravel APIs with CI/CD pipelines and test automation.
- Delivered a customer-facing marketing portal (Laravel + Vue), improving usability and performance.
- Migrated CMS to Prismic, enabling multilingual content editing and decoupling content from deployments.
- Extracted a focused microservice from a large monolithic API system, building the complete infrastructure (CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, coding standards) needed to support reliable, independent service deployment.
- Facilitated Agile ceremonies and process improvements as Scrum Master while actively contributing as a full-time developer.
- Mentored teammates and coordinated closely with leadership during a six-month management gap.
June 2011 – August 2020 (Part-time 2011–2015, Full-time 2015–2020)
Fostered engineering maturity as the sole technical lead at a digital agency, delivering custom full-stack solutions.
- Introduced Laravel and transitioned legacy projects from procedural PHP and WordPress to MVC architecture.
- Built CI/CD pipelines using Git, Laravel Envoyer, and other tooling to automate deployments and enforce coding standards.
- Led architecture and implementation of multi-tenant lead dashboards, headless CMS platforms, and third-party integrations (e.g., Salesforce, QuickBooks), building distributed systems that served multiple client organizations simultaneously.
- Built serverless infrastructure with Laravel Vapor and AWS Lambda for scalable delivery, demonstrating cloud-native architecture expertise.
- Developed automated product import system processing thousands of XML records daily using Redis-backed job queues and SOAP APIs, demonstrating experience with large-scale data processing and distributed job systems.
- Built real-time interactive sales tools utilizing AWS Lambda, WebSocket connections, and third-party API integrations (Salesforce, Google OAuth, Hellosign), showcasing full-stack distributed application development.
- Mentored a distributed engineering team across time zones, improving code quality and consistency by championing evolving technical standards and tooling practices.
- Scoped and delivered full-stack solutions on compressed timelines, balancing client requirements with technical feasibility to ensure timely, high-quality delivery.
Before becoming a full-time engineer, I spent over a decade teaching music and technology in Title I schools, where I learned to break down complex ideas for diverse learners and lead technology adoption initiatives. I began coding to automate grading and administrative tasks — a path that sparked a career-long passion for building systems that empower others.
- Built custom Python tooling to automate student feedback and grade syncing.
- Led school-wide 1:1 Chromebook deployment and trained faculty on educational tech, managing the deployment of hundreds of devices across multiple campuses and implementing centralized management systems.
- Developed communication and mentorship skills now used to lead cross-functional teams and onboard engineers.
Master of Education, Instrumental Music Education
Auburn University, Auburn, AL · August 2005
Bachelor of Science, Music Education
Bob Jones University, Greenville, SC · December 1999
Python and Django are my day-to-day right now, but I’ve worked with everything on this list and can jump back into any of it without much ramp-up. I’m also a lifelong learner, and I genuinely enjoy adding to this list.
Languages: Python, TypeScript, PHP, JavaScript, SQL
Frameworks: Django, Laravel, React, Vue.js, Node.js, Express
Tools & Platforms: Docker, AWS (Lambda, ECS, RDS, S3, CloudFormation), GitHub Actions, Okta, Datadog, Prismic, Lando, Laravel Vapor, Redis, WebSockets
Testing & QA: Pytest, PHPUnit, Cypress, Postman
Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, DynamoDB, Redis
DevOps: CI/CD, Docker Compose, GitHub Workflows, Laravel Envoyer
APIs: REST, GraphQL, JSON API