Mark Mcdonald
Developer Advocate, Generative AI
Perth, Western Australia
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMark Mcdonald is a Developer Advocate specializing in Generative AI with 19 years of engineering and devrel experience based in Perth, Australia. At Google DeepMind he helped launch PaLM and Gemini APIs and models, authored large-scale coursework for 140k learners, and built open-source resources like the widely used google-generativeai SDK and Gemini Cookbook. He combines hands-on engineering—original Gemini integrations for llama-index and infrastructure work on docs, build systems and client libraries—with developer advocacy, speaking at events like Google I/O and growing communities to millions of users. His background spans TensorFlow, TFLite, Maps SDKs and production DevOps, reflecting deep experience in documentation automation, API ergonomics and build tooling. Colleagues rely on him to translate complex ML systems into practical developer journeys and reproducible examples. An Australian-based builder who frequently moves between code, docs and community programs, he’s equally comfortable shipping SDKs as he is running interactive tutorials and token-counting notebooks.
19 years of coding experience
24 years of employment as a software developer
Willetton Senior High SchoolB.Eng, Software Engineering, B.Eng, Software Engineering at Curtin University of Technology
Stackoverflow
7,746reputation
3.0mreached
124answers
22questions
google-maps
top-5%
64-bit
top-1%
tensorflow
top-1%
winapi
top-5%
x86-64
top-5%
python
top-5%
Github Skills (43)
api-rest10
tokenize10
client-library10
test-driven-design10
python10
restful-api10
machine-learning10
bash10
java10
64-bit10
javas10
automation10
tokenizer10
api-documentation10
api10
Programming languages (16)
Github contributions (5)
google-gemini/cookbook
Mar 2024 - Apr 2025
Examples and guides for using the Gemini API
Role in this project:
Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:162 reviews, 135 PRs, 100 pushes in 1 year
Contributions summary:Mark's contribution centers on adding a new guide focused on token counting within the Gemini API, specifically showcasing how tokens work and how to count them. The guide includes interactive examples within a Jupyter Notebook, detailing context windows and multi-turn conversational token calculations. This highlights the user's focus on educating others on the Gemini API through practical and accessible examples.
geminigemini-api
googlemaps/google-maps-services-java
Aug 2014 - Feb 2016
Java client library for Google Maps API Web Services
Role in this project:DevOps Engineer
DevOps EngineerContributions:129 commits, 33 PRs, 35 pushes in 1 year 5 months
Contributions summary:Mark's contributions primarily centered on automating the build process and setting up the development environment. They added a Gradle wrapper, enabling consistent builds across different environments. They also set up an environment variable for the API key and configured the query rate limit within the GeoApiContext, enhancing the project's operational efficiency and adhering to API usage guidelines.
apiweb-services-apigoogle-maps-apiclient-librarygoogle
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