Ian Macdonald
Full-time Father
Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolIan Macdonald is a seasoned systems engineer with 15+ years of hands-on experience in systems administration and systems programming, shaped by early Silicon Valley roles at Google and Linuxcare. Now based in Amsterdam and focused on family life, he remains an active hacker and open-source contributor—recently improving front-end UX for the privacy-focused Session Desktop messenger. His career blends deep operational know-how with practical UI sensibilities, and he’s as comfortable optimizing backend systems as trimming whitespace to improve usability. A Silicon Valley survivor who started coding in 1980, Ian brings historical perspective, pragmatic problem-solving, and a talent for quietly improving complex systems.
15 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
The School Of Life
Github Skills (11)
typescript10
user-interface10
typescripts10
react10
typescript-types10
messenger9
ui-design9
javascript8
css7
html7
anonymity6
Programming languages (15)
Github contributions (5)
oxen-io/session-desktop
Sep 2021 - Oct 2022
Session Desktop - Onion routing based messenger
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:7 reviews, 22 commits, 60 PRs in 1 year
Contributions summary:Ian primarily focused on enhancing the user interface and improving user experience within the Session Desktop messenger application. Their contributions include implementing new features like keyboard shortcuts for navigation and adjusting the display of service node information, and improving attachment handling. The user also fixed UI inconsistencies and enhanced usability by trimming whitespace and modifying styling. The commits demonstrate a focus on improving the overall user experience of the application.
securechatonionsignal-protocolrouting
ianmacd/c2s
Apr 2020 - Jan 2022
Contributions:35 commits, 20 pushes, 4 branches in 1 year 9 months
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