Mike Mcquaid
CTPO at Administrate
City of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
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Top expert inCross-Platform Developer Tools and Productivity Software
Mike McQuaid is a seasoned engineering and product leader with 19 years of experience scaling developer tools and open source ecosystems, currently serving as CTPO at Administrate and long-time Homebrew project leader. He has driven large productivity gains at GitHub as a Principal Engineer (employee #232) — notably leading the Merge Queue and internal developer environment — and co-founded Workbrew to bring Homebrew to enterprise macOS fleets. Mike blends hands-on engineering (deep contributions across Homebrew, GitHub repos, and numerous devops/automation projects) with product strategy, mentorship and governance, having guided Homebrew to millions of users and fiscally sustainable stewardship. A prolific speaker and author (Git in Practice) who has been remote-first since 2009, he’s an early adopter of AI-assisted development and has operationalised LLM tooling to dramatically speed reviews and delivery. Notably, his work spans both low-level build/install tooling and high-level organisational processes, making him equally comfortable refactoring install scripts as designing company-wide DORA and compliance programs.
19 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
BSc (Hons), Computer Science and Management Science, BSc (Hons), Computer Science and Management Science at The University of Edinburgh
English
Stackoverflow
9,714reputation
659kreached
81answers
7questions
xhtml
top-5%
svn
top-1%
validation
top-5%
Github Skills (61)
dependency-management10
git10
svn10
bootstrap10
package-management10
scripting10
testing10
css10
command-line-interface10
open-source10
bash10
homebrew-cask10
cicd10
ruby10
homebrew10
Programming languages (32)
Github contributions (5)
Homebrew/install
Jan 2015 - Jan 2023
📥 Homebrew (un)installer
Role in this project:
DevOps Engineer
DevOps EngineerContributions:259 reviews, 389 commits, 458 PRs in 8 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Mike primarily focused on the `install.sh` script within the Homebrew installation repository. Their commits involved substantial modifications to the installation process, including adjustments to macOS compatibility, system checks, and error handling. The user also addressed the handling of non-interactive installations, and made improvements to the overall user experience with messaging adjustments and formatting. The contributions show a deep understanding of system administration and the nuances of cross-platform software deployment.
homebrewrubyinstall
Homebrew/homebrew-services
Jan 2013 - Jan 2023
💀 Homebrew Services (deprecated)
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:151 reviews, 308 commits, 426 PRs in 10 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Mike primarily focused on improving the `brew services` command, the core functionality of the Homebrew Services. Their contributions included refactoring the code to utilize more modern methods, handling edge cases such as missing configuration files, and improving overall stability. The user also addressed various bugs and deprecated functionalities, enhancing the reliability and user experience of managing services.
homebrew
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