🇨🇦 Ottawa, Canada

Matthew
MacRae-Bovell

Software Engineer Writer Speaker Researcher Community Builder Game Designer Adventurer Software Engineer · Writer · Speaker · Researcher · Community Builder · Game Designer · Adventurer

Building things, sharing ideas, and exploring what's next.

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Matthew MacRae-Bovell

Hey, I'm Matthew 👋

I'm a software engineer from Ottawa, Canada, currently working on authorization at GitLab, with experience building production systems at companies like Shopify and RBC.

Outside of work you'll find me writing, speaking, researching, designing games, and exploring whatever's next.

February 21, 2026 A Beginner's Guide to Observability: Logs, Metrics, and Traces Explained Observability can be intimidating for developers early in their career, this guide aims to fix that Read more
Activity
  1. Jul 2026 Talk Declarative Test-Native Software Fault Injection
  2. Jan 2026 Article Carleton Computer Science: Maximizing Your Honours Project
  3. Jul 2025 Article Code Review Strategies Every Team Should Be Using
  4. Jun 2025 Project Student to Software Engineer
  5. Mar 2025 Article How Students Can Get Developer Experience Without a Job
  6. Jan 2025 Talk Strategies For Launching Your Career In Tech
Software Engineer

Building systems
that scale.

Shipping software used by millions of users and businesses worldwide.

Explore engineering →
Writer

Thoughts on craft
and career.

Writing on engineering, developer growth, and lessons learned the hard way.

Read the blog →
Speaker

Presenting ideas
to audiences.

Talks and workshops across universities, conferences, and meetups.

View talks →
Community Builder

Giving back,
building together.

Organizing events, leading communities, and making space for others to grow.

Coming soon
Researcher

Advancing the
discipline.

Paper accepted to FSE 2026 on fault injection in software systems.

See my research →
Game Designer

Crafting worlds
and experiences.

Designing games that are playful, surprising, and worth your time.

See my games →
Freelance

Available for
contract work.

Bringing senior-level engineering to ambitious projects and teams.

Coming soon
Adventurer

Exploring the world,
one trip at a time.

Travel, hiking, and whatever's around the next corner.

Coming soon