I'm Danny McMurrough
I currently work remotely as a Sr. Software Engineer at Calendly.
As a Senior Software Engineer with expertise in performance optimization, full-stack development, and infrastructure scaling, I specialize in building high-reliability systems and streamlining engineering workflows. With a proven track record of collaborating across teams to address bottlenecks, and designing and implementing end-to-end solutions, I have contributed to the success of companies like Calendly and Qualtrics.
About me
With ten years of dedicated experience in the software industry, I am a Senior Software Engineer adept in developing and testing full-stack services, custom DevOps & CICD solutions, creating comprehensive functional and nonfunctional testing suites, and launching scalable and resilient products. I've catalyzed the inception of new teams within a vibrant startup environment, creating performant services from scratch running in production. I excel in orchestrating collaborative efforts across teams, driven by a passionate dedication to mentorship and fostering innovative solutions within the constantly evolving tech landscape.
- Age:37
- Nationality:American / Irish
- Study:Oregon State University
- Current Employment:Calendly
Education
Bachelor of Science: Computer Science
Interdisciplinary Honors Program and a specialization in Networking and security.
GPA: 3.95
Work
Sr. Software Engineer (Backend)
- Performance and Reliability Enhancements:
- Reduced monolithic build times from 30 minutes to 12 minutes and increased build reliability from ~40% to 100% by redesigning the full monolith build and updating underlying infrastructure. Migrated entire monolithic service to modern CI/CD workflow utilizing Buildkit & optimized frontend caching. - Database Concurrency:
- Reversed engineered underlying architecture to implement custom pre-loading logic, and enhanced database concurrency handling.
Sr. Software Engineer (Full-Stack)
- Resiliency Testing/Chaos Engineering:
- Spearheaded a comprehensive program conducting engineer-wide “Gamedays” using resiliency testing tools Gremlin, AWS FIS & also in-house developed tooling (Pumba & Stree-NG). Provided quality controls for 1200 microservices handling Qualtircs’ total traffic- saving upwards of $1 million per year.
- Developed strategic plans for testing execution based on research of previous incidents (internal & external), discovered vulnerabilities, and random fault injection. Few ex. gamedays: AWS region outage, service discovery, rate-limiting, system migrations. On top of gamedays, ran typical CPU/Memory/ & Network fault injection on services.
- Architected a fully autonomous platform for real-time fault tolerance validation, integrating internal resiliency tools. This platform continuously enforced resiliency health metrics, proactively preventing system degradation. - Performance Testing Toolchain:
- Designed, built, and maintained internal toolchains for Performance testing, with 15 complete micro-services, including auto-scaled ECS pipeline for high-resource, UI-based load testing, and mission-critical for onboarding large brands, saving upwards of $300k/yr in reduced resource costs. - Shadow Testing in Production:
- Architected shadow testing service suite, handling 100K TPS & prod traffic w/ codeless solution using eBPF request/response capture & container networking, auto-response compare & diffs, service API profiling, and traffic replay at load. - UI Developer Portal:
- Designed and created from the ground up a React-based UI developer portal, backed with a Golang server and Elasticsearch DB, adding in SSO authentication, service/company API integrations (swagger/dependency map/SLOs…), real-time monitoring dashboards, custom docker-API stats monitoring, and automated testing & deployment pipelines. - Devops Orchestration:
- Created a new deployment orchestration service that utilized nomad under the hood in order to dynamically deploy, scale up, and inject parameters for our tooling suite. Adopted by the DevOps team and then used by the entire engineering org. - Leadership and Mentorship:
- Acting team lead and mentor. Mentored two active engineers and mentored 2 interns both of which were hired full time.
Software Engineer II (Backend)
- Improved Observability and Alerting:
- Added production tracers w/ dynamic alerting + health dashboard new scalable service created from scratch for Covid critical workflows. Consistently catches issues prior to the customer, even detect 3rd party issues (i.e. Twilo & Gmail issues). This service was the backbone of a new team created after w/ additional tracers were added and maintained by them. - Large-Scale Isolation Testing:
- Led eng-wide initiatives, including quarterly Gamedays for fault testing using homebrewed tooling (pumba+stressng+ChaosToolkit)- reducing repeat incidents by 90%. - Fault Tolerance Testing:
- Designed & implemented a robust, resilient, and highly performant isolation testing tool to enable safe load testing of heavily interconnected systems.
Software Test Engineer II (Backend)
- Automation and Integration Testing:
- Created a full suite of tests and new test automation pipeline testing by leveraging team source code libraries adapting to the Java Rest Assured framework and packaging up in docker image/Jenkins. - Cross-Functional Collaboration:
- Worked cross-team and added new integration testing to expand the quality and adoption of the framework I created.
Software Test Engineer
- Protocol analysis and automation:
- Automated testing for casino games and proprietary protocols, significantly reducing manual testing time and improving efficiency. - Database and system testing:
- Conducted extensive database testing and developed automated testing tools that saved hundreds of hours of manual data entry.
Skills
Devops: AWS, K8, Docker, Jenkins, Gitlab Pipelines, Spinnaker, Terraform, Helm,Puppet, Nomad, Consul, Vault,Rundeck
DB: SQL, NoSQL, Elasticsearch, DynamoDB, MongoDB, Redis
Load Tools: JMeter, Gatling,Artillery, Vegeta, Kafka-Loader, Gatling, Distributed tracing (Jager/Open Tracing)
Resiliency Tools: AWS-FIS, Chaos Mesh, Gremlin, Pumba/Custom, stress-ng
Testing Frameworks: Selenium, Pytest, TestNG, Junit, Go Tests, SoapUI, Test Rail, Creating Full CICD Test Automation Frameworks from scratch.
Space Pirate Defense!
Feeling that gamer itch? Feel free to play my tower defense game made from scratch using Javascript-HTML5-Canvas.
Give it a go! Start by buying towers - dragging them onto the map in a strategic location. Hit Send Next Wave to begin!
You can also find it hosted at: danthedev-towerd.info
"Travel is fatal to prejudice" ~Mark Twain
In my 20 years as a manager, I can confidently say that Danny stands out as the hardest-working individual I've had the privilege to lead. His exceptional technical prowess, combined with his approachable and personable nature, makes collaborating with him an absolute pleasure, setting an exemplary standard for the team.
-- Venki Krish | Senior Manager | Qualtrics
During my internship at Qualtrics, Danny's mentorship was invaluable. His thorough guidance, approachable nature, technical expertise, and unwavering support were instrumental in my growth, both professionally and personally, making my experience exceptionally enriching.
-- Will Taylor | Software Engineer II | Qualtrics
Danny's exceptional work ethic was apparent from day one, swiftly earning him a place on an advanced team. His positive energy and dedicated approach significantly enhanced our work culture, making collaborating with him a genuine pleasure.
-- Iveta Taylor| QE Manager | Gaming Labs International
Danny is the go-to person for his unparalleled expertise, consistently guiding the team with his technical prowess and serving as a trusted resource for all inquiries. His groundbreaking contributions to shadow testing have been a game changer for the company, showcasing his innovative approach and substantial impact on our success.
-- Josh Furr | Senior Software Engineer | Qualtrics
Get in touch.
Send me over an email if you would like to get in touch!
- Github
- danbamboo
- in/dannythedev