Michael Cousins

Full-stack staff software engineer and technical leader. Solving users' problems thoughtfully (with tests) for 10+ years. Empowers teams to ship high-quality products and experiences.

Work Experience

Viam

  • 1¼ years
  • Platform for building and managing smart machines
  • Software Engineer 4 (Senior) — Mar 2023 to Feb 2024
  • Software Engineer 5 (Senior) — Feb 2024 to present

  • Planned and shipped a rebuild of Viam's machine configuration UI, leading a team of nine engineers to drastically improve the app's ease-of-use and reliability

  • Led a multi-team, multi-project effort to move Viam’s web app from a brittle, untested proof-of-concept to a resilient, growth-ready SvelteKit app, digging the app out of tech-debt bankruptcy and unblocking parallel feature development

  • Switched to Playwright for E2E tests by overhauling CI workflows, reducing spurious flakiness and keeping CI fast while contributions increased

  • Skilled-up software engineers of varying levels of experience on unit testing, end-to-end testing, continuous integration, and architectural best-practices

Opentrons

  • 5½ years
  • Open-source liquid handling robots for biologists
  • Frontend Software Engineer — Aug 2017 to Mar 2018
  • Software Engineer 3 (Mid-level) — Mar 2018 to Mar 2019
  • Software Engineer 4 (Senior) — Mar 2019 to Mar 2023

  • Designed, built, and shipped a reliability-focused rewrite of the OT-2 and Flex robots' control and workflow execution software, unblocking complex multi-system integrations while keeping users' already functioning workflows intact

  • Architected, developed, and maintained the Opentrons App, the Electron and React desktop app that controls the OT-2 and Flex robots

  • Prioritized work with my teams' embedded designers and product managers, shipping fixes and features to reduce customer support requests by 30%

  • Configured and maintained CI and deployment systems for multiple products across multiple languages, operating systems, and CI providers

Keen Home

  • 2¾ years
  • Smart, connected HVAC products
  • Mechatronics Engineer — Nov 2014 to Jul 2015
  • Product Engineer — Jul 2015 to Jul 2017

  • Rebuilt the Keen Home API's auth systems - written in Scala - allowing users to integrate their Smart Vents with Ecobee thermostats and Amazon Alexa

  • Designed and implemented hardware and software for assembly-line QC fixtures

  • Created and managed Node.js-based production systems, tools, and tests

Wiley Cousins

  • 1¾ years
  • Contract software & hardware engineering
  • The "Cousins" half — Feb 2013 to Oct 2014

  • Designed electronics and firmware for wearables and other connected products

  • Created and taught a 12-week "Introduction to Circuits" class

Open-Source Projects

testing-library/svelte-testing-library

Sole maintainer

Renders and tests Svelte components for Viam and thousands of other users.

JS-DevTools/npm-publish

Sole maintainer

Automatically publishes libraries to npm for Viam and thousands of other users.

mcous/vitest-when

Creator

Isolates Viam's & Opentrons' UI logic in tests with easy conditional stubbing for Vitest.

mcous/decoy

Creator

Isolates Opentrons' core logic in tests with easy conditional stubbing for Pytest.

tracespace/tracespace

Creator

Renders fabrication (Gerber) files as SVG on various PCB manufacturers' websites.

Skills

Languages

  • TypeScript & JavaScript (Expert)
  • Python (Intermediate)
  • Go (Familiar)

Testing

  • Test-driven development
  • UI component testing (Testing Library)
  • Automated end-to-end testing (Playwright)

Front-end

  • Testable, scalable application architecture
  • API data management
  • Component-based UI (React, Svelte)

Back-end

  • HTTP API design
  • Event-driven architecture

Leadership

  • Technical skills development
  • Project management

Education

B.Sc. Mechanical Engineering

  • Northwestern University, class of 2012
  • Concentration in mechatronics