Dean Mcdonnell
Vice President & Technology Officer, Global Architecture & Engineering at Charles River Laboratories
Ireland
Summary
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RockstarDean Mcdonnell is a technology leader with 13 years of experience shaping global architecture and engineering teams, currently serving as Vice President & Technology Officer for Charles River Laboratories. He combines executive oversight with hands-on engineering roots—contributing to notable open-source projects like Seneca (Node.js microservices) and Johnny-Five (JavaScript robotics/IoT), where he focused on refactoring, legacy cleanup, and embedded sound features. Dean has progressed through technical and delivery leadership roles at NearForm and Charles River, bringing practical experience in digital architecture, customer experience engineering, and large-scale delivery. Based in Ireland, he maintains an active coder mentality, often tackling messy refactors and test-driven improvements that keep critical systems healthy. He is known for translating complex legacy systems into maintainable platforms while keeping a developer’s eye for clean code and useful documentation.
13 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
English
Github Skills (15)
iot10
microservices-application10
nodejs10
javascript10
refactoring10
robotics10
microservices10
arduino10
testing10
sys9
embedded9
pwm7
raspberry-pi6
adc5
i2c5
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
senecajs/seneca
Sep 2015 - Sep 2016
A microservices toolkit for Node.js.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:3 releases, 155 commits, 106 PRs in 1 year
Contributions summary:Dean primarily focused on refactoring and improving the Seneca.js codebase. Their contributions involved removing deprecated plugins, refactoring the codebase, and addressing failing tests after these changes. The user also made minor documentation updates, and removed references to legacy components, with their focus on cleaning and optimizing the overall structure.
node-jsjavascriptnodejsmicroservicesmicroservice
rwaldron/johnny-five
Aug 2014 - Oct 2014
JavaScript Robotics and IoT programming framework, developed at Bocoup.
Role in this project:Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:6 commits, 2 PRs, 29 comments in 2 months
Contributions summary:Dean primarily contributed to the enhancement of the `johnny-five` library, focusing on the `Piezo` component for sound generation. They implemented new features related to note functionality within the library, including the definition of new notes, octave handling, and the creation of a scale-based example. The user also updated existing tests to align with changes made to the `Piezo` component, ensuring that new features and note mappings functioned as expected.
serialdactplinkpcduinoraspberry-pi
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