Marshall Cottrell
Senior Frontend Engineer at CENTRAL VERMONT SWIM CLUB
East Montpelier, Vermont, United States
Summary
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RockstarMarshall Cottrell is a Senior Frontend Engineer with 14 years of full-stack experience, currently shaping user-facing systems at Chess.com while freelancing and coaching youth swim in Vermont. He blends front-end expertise with deep back-end and database experience—contributing to notable open-source projects like RethinkDB drivers, Horizon, and the Bull job queue—to deliver robust, real-time applications. Previously he translated technical strategy into operational impact as Principal, Strategy and Operations (Technical) at GitLab, bridging engineering and product priorities. Marshall has a track record of optimizing performance and reliability (Redis/Lua caching, cursor iteration, API refactors) and improving cross-platform JS libraries and ORMs. Colleagues rely on him for pragmatic refactors and schema/validation improvements that reduce runtime errors and simplify maintenance. He’s comfortable moving between hands-on coding and strategic engineering leadership, with a knack for turning complex distributed-system issues into maintainable solutions.
14 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
Github Skills (32)
string-parsing10
javascript10
schema-validation10
lib10
python10
redis10
apidoc10
rethinkdb-go10
testing10
user-authentication10
authentication10
rethinkdb10
message-queue10
orm10
api10
Programming languages (13)
Github contributions (5)
rethinkdb/horizon
Nov 2015 - Jun 2017
Horizon is a realtime, open-source backend for JavaScript apps.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:14 commits, 10 PRs, 5 pushes in 1 year 7 months
Contributions summary:Marshall primarily focused on back-end development, refactoring code to use Joi for schema validation and implementing server-side validation. They added Joi validation to server options and enforced requirements for `order` and `limit` in the schema. The user also worked on refactoring authentication to use promises, exposing user profiles in handshakes and included fixes and improvements in the existing code.
horizonrealtimejavascriptbackendnodejs
rethinkdb/rethinkdb
May 2015 - Jan 2016
The open-source database for the realtime web.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Database Engineer
Back-end Developer & Database EngineerContributions:23 commits, 21 PRs, 5 pushes in 7 months
Contributions summary:Marshall primarily contributed to the JavaScript and Python drivers for the RethinkDB database, focusing on features and bug fixes related to the API and connection management. They added new error types and updated tests accordingly. Additionally, the user implemented and refactored features such as cursor iteration, and added top-level aggregation terms and shard/replica parameters for data import/restore functionality. These contributions improved the database's functionality and maintainability.
realtimenosql-databasebackend-as-a-servicereal-timeclient-library
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