Michael Thornhill
Chief Executive Officer at Machine Software
Ireland
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolMichael Thornhill is a seasoned software leader and CEO with 17 years of experience building and managing web and mobile software businesses from Ireland. He combines deep technical roots—PhD-level research in fuzzy logic and early-career systems work in C++/embedded domains—with hands-on backend development in Python/Django, including contributions to well-used projects like dj-stripe and django-paypal. As founder/CEO of Machine Software and former Managing Director of Maithú IT Solutions, he has repeatedly moved between strategic leadership and shipping maintainable, test-covered payment and e-commerce features. His background spans enterprise consultancy and product engineering across Java, .NET, and Python, giving him a pragmatic view of architecture and operations. Notably, he has driven subtle but important improvements to payment integrations (capturing, IPN/PDT refactors and extra charge parameters) that boost reliability in production systems. He brings a research-informed mindset to commercial software delivery, focused on resilience, maintainability, and practical automation.
17 years of coding experience
26 years of employment as a software developer
PhD, Fuzzy Logic, Engineering, PhD, Fuzzy Logic, Engineering at Queens University Of BelfastB.E., Engineering, B.E., Engineering at University College Dublin
English, Irish, Spanish, French, Arabic
Github Skills (20)
paypal10
python10
stripe10
back-end-development10
ecommerce10
django10
testing10
payment10
backend10
multiview9
data-modeling9
modeling9
pageviews9
rest-api8
apidoc8
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
diefenbach/django-lfs
Jan 2010 - Aug 2013
An online-shop based on Django
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:344 commits in 3 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Michael primarily contributed to the development of back-end features for the Django-based e-commerce platform. Their work focused on enhancing the order processing functionality by adding features like a requested delivery date. They also worked on localizing addresses for different regions. Additionally, they made adjustments to the checkout process, including form modifications and integration of JavaScript for dynamic address updates.
djangopythonecommerceonline-shop
johnboxall/django-paypal
Apr 2009 - May 2009
A pluggable Django application for integrating PayPal Payments Standard or Payments Pro
Role in this project:Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:24 commits in 22 days
Contributions summary:Michael primarily contributed to the backend logic of the Django-based application for PayPal integration. They refactored code to send signals based on success, modified models and views, and fixed template paths. Their contributions included refactoring the verify function and refactoring IPN and PDT into separate applications, suggesting a focus on improving the application's core functionality and maintainability. The user also added a test to ensure that the cm field gets saved in the custom field of PDT objects.
djangopaypal
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