Tom Mcdonald
Lead Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft
Redmond, Washington, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolTom Mcdonald is a Lead Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft with over a decade of experience specializing in .NET runtime diagnostics and core debugging infrastructure. Based in Redmond, he contributes deep systems expertise to the dotnet/runtime project, having implemented hot reload, improved exception handling, and added managed debugging support for CET-enabled scenarios. His work touches low-level runtime behaviors—thread context, stack walking, debugger initialization, and COM wrapper fixes—demonstrating both diagnostic rigor and production-grade reliability. Tom combines an electrical engineering foundation from the University of Delaware with seasoned engineering leadership to solve subtle runtime and tooling challenges. Colleagues rely on him for complex bug triage and durable fixes that improve developer productivity across the .NET ecosystem. He brings a steady, detail-oriented approach to maintaining and evolving one of the most widely used open-source runtimes.
10 years of coding experience
BS, Electrical Engineering, BS, Electrical Engineering at University of Delaware
Github Skills (15)
windows10
net10
asp-net10
debugging10
debug10
dotnet-new10
dotnet10
c-language10
cprogramming-language10
x86-649
64-bit9
macos9
linux9
arm9
cmake8
Programming languages (8)
Github contributions (5)
dotnet/runtime
May 2018 - Nov 2022
.NET is a cross-platform runtime for cloud, mobile, desktop, and IoT apps.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:175 reviews, 16 commits, 90 PRs in 4 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Tom contributed to the .NET runtime by implementing and fixing features related to debugging, hot reload, and exception handling. They added support for managed debugging with CET enabled, addressing code related to out-of-process thread context scenarios. The user also made changes to debugger initialization, patch skip logic, and stack walking, demonstrating involvement in core runtime debugging functionalities. They also worked on fixing issues in COM Wrappers.
dotnetruntimelinuxcsharpxamarin
tommcdon/runtime
Jan 2020 - Mar 2025
.NET is a cross-platform runtime for cloud, IoT, and desktop apps.
Contributions:7 releases, 169 pushes, 89 branches in 5 years 3 months
dotnetiot-cloudlinuxruntimedesktop-apps
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