Curriculum vitæ

Matthew Coe

Kingston, Ontario | Software Development and Information Technology
B.C.Sc. Dalhousie University

Summary

Web software developer and manager, and ex-systems administrator, with multiple languages and 20+ years experience. Particular interests include enterprise and infrastructure software development, information security, and UNIX/Linux systems, with peripheral interests in machine learning, network security, and cryptography. Oracle Certified Associate, Java 7.

Experience

Kijiji Canada (Adevinta from June 2021; eBay prior to that)

Manager, Software Development
March 2022 – June 2025
  • Mentored and guided subordinate software developers in their professional development
  • Maintained relationships between technical teams and product owners to ensure features delivered satisfy needs
  • Hiring and dismissal decisions for the team
  • Participated in architectural discussions to help guide future of the Kijiji software platform
  • Ensured team delivered agreed-upon features on sustainable schedule by coordinating Scrum ceremonies
  • Resolved external blockers to keep the team working smoothly
  • Conducted regular one-to-one meetings with team members to get and give individual feedback and coaching
  • Regularly reviewed code contributions to ensure internal standards are met
  • Provided direct software development support in times of low capacity
  • Took over ownership of Kijiji‘s technical intern recruiting and screening program. Coordinated resume blinding for >200 application packets per year, as well as organizing screeners to filter out lower-graded applicants, sending high-quality applicants to third-party code testing through TestDome, and coordinated panel interviews for personality and technical fit. In ~10 years of the internship program, almost all hires were advised to apply for a full-time role with Kijiji after graduation.
  • Coordinated between three "experience" (product) teams within Kijiji on requirements and timeline for introducing neighbourhood-based search through an integration with Local Logic. Together, we established a timeline that would meet product team needs, while being able to release MVP features early and gather business performance about the overall project.
  • Maintained a sprint capacity predictor spreadsheet, using various Google Spreadsheets regression calculations, to determine, based on past performance, and the current sprint's capacity, how much work the team should commit to. This was regularly used in collaboration with Product Managers to help catch potential project delays early while keeping development teams efficient without being overworked. With enough historical data, proved to be fairly accurate in its predictions, and tended to encourage teams to break work down into smaller, manageable, predictable chunks.
  • Led project to design API changes supporting map-based search on Kijiji, using Elasticsearch under the hood to conduct the actual search. Design was robust enough to provide both regular "paginated" results and a clustered map of results in the same query, and was able to satisfy business requirements involving promotion of listings paid for by the sellers. Collaborated with mobile development team to iterate on the design until we had an organic-feeling map of listing clusters, and the final API design sufficiently anticipated the Web front-end needs that everything they asked for was already supported in some way, even the things that Mobile hadn't requested.
  • Provided leadership amongst fellow managers and team leads by holding a daily “office hours” open meeting where any of my team, direct reports, or former direct reports were welcome to drop in for advice, pairing, or just getting a glimpse of my side of the work. This seemed to fill in a gap we had from the all-remote atmosphere where either problem solving was done entirely by chat, or staff would wait until the scheduled 1-on-1 meeting to discuss the problems. Other managers, upon hearing about it, opted to set up “office hours” of their own.
  • Was regularly held up as an example to new product managers of “how to write a work ticket.”
  • Regularly redirected product owners to prior occasions the company had worked on a particular idea, in order to prevent us re-inventing the wheel.
  • Led project to migrate from OpenStack VMs to GCP VMs, a legacy third-party listing aggregation partner tool before data centre contracts for the OpenStack clusters were closed.
Technical Team Lead (Interim)
November 2021 – March 2022
  • Maintained relationships between technical teams and product owners to ensure features delivered satisfy needs
  • Participated in architectural discussions to help guide future of the Kijiji software platform
  • Ensured team delivers agreed-upon features on sustainable schedule by coordinating Scrum ceremonies
  • Resolved external blockers to keep the team working smoothly
  • Regularly reviewed code contributions to ensure internal standards are met
  • Led project to migrate Kijiji image hosting from eBay-internal systems to Adevinta-owned systems before extended support window closed. Required multiple integration points, and introduction of image lifecycle management to minimize costs on the new system. Used event-driven principles where appropriate to keep other systems responsive.
Information Security Champion
May 2019 – August 2024
  • Ensured newly-discovered vulnerabilities are resolved within internally prescribed SLAs
  • Liaised with external security researchers and represent Kijiji's bug bounty program
  • Advised product and technology teams on security best practices
  • Guided adoption of secure software development lifecycle
  • Developed plan for switch to secure introduction of secrets stored in Vault to new microservice instances running in Mesos/Marathon.
Senior Software Developer
January 2017 – March 2022 | Java 8/11 (Spring Web, Dropwizard, Mesos/Marathon)
  • Ongoing development and architectural evolution of cross-cutting development concerns.
  • Picked up project technical lead position on single sign-on project between Kijiji and Kijiji Autos, providing guidance on future centralization of SSO features in other eBay Classifieds Group properties.
  • Designed internal tools to simplify Hystrix integration with internal systems, chunked iteration over large datasets, management of Cassandra schema migrations.
  • Regular on-call rotation includes problem solving, communication, delegation, and incident management, both during and after the fact.
  • Spearheaded biweekly town-hall meetings for technology department and entire company to share successes, lessons learned, and open forum to questions, to maintain open and clear lines of communication. Visiting colleagues from other eBay Classifieds Group businesses took the format back their offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, and South Africa.
  • Led periodic training sessions in incident management, to ensure that new On Call personnel learned what steps are expected during a production incident, as well as how to effectively debrief following the incident.
  • With the blessing of the Human Resources team:
    • Devised an intern mentorship program to help University of Toronto Professional Experience Year students get more from their internship and help understand what's important to them, with many similarities reported to Kijiji and eBay's manager training program.
    • Led regular goal-setting workshops open to all Kijiji Canada FTEs, which received a broad range of job functions amongst the attendees, and were positively received—long-tenured employees reported a renewed focus on achieving their extracurricular goals.
    • Collaborated with several BUs to create a unified onboarding checklist, in order to ensure that new hires got a reasonably consistent onboarding experience, and that key steps in the process weren't missed.
    • Interfaced with U of T Troost iLead faculty to coordinate in-house workshops and Kijiji participation in iLead's Community of Practice conferences.
Software Developer
May 2010 – January 2017 | Java 6 (Spring, JSF), PHP 5
  • Led the design and development team to create a new internal push notification gateway, before access to legacy eBay notification gateway was lost; this architectural design was adopted and rebuilt for central use throughout eBay Classifieds Group.
  • Ongoing development of core Kijiji platform, and internal support layer for native mobile apps.
  • Performed architecture, development, and maintenance of mission-critical customer support tools and anti-fraud expert systems for Kijiji Canada and sister eBay Classified Group sites worldwide, in addition to systems for aggregating data from partners in automotive and real estate industries.
  • Collaborated on core product projects that affect above tools.
  • Created a prototype user profiling system to assist customer support agents and tools in dynamically assessing risk of new listing, with the intent of discovering when users were no longer acting “like themselves,” potentially indicating an account takeover situation. Presented the prototype at an internal, international hackathon and was voted best project by attendees.
Recommendations

“My time at eBay greatly benefitted from the hire of Matthew. He is a great software developer who is always ready to take on new tasks regardless of the complexity. Whether rewriting some crusty old system, maintaining and extending a critical process or furthering the business by creating something new, Matt was someone we could always trust to get it done.

“Always professional, personable, and ready to sweat the small stuff.

“Leaving Kijiji behind was easy knowing that it was left in Matt's very capable hands.” —James Stansfield, Local Product Developer, eBay. June 19, 2012.

Front-End Developer, Nurun Inc.

March – April 2010 | JavaScript (jQuery)
  • Design and development of rich applets using jQuery, built on JSP core.
  • Created “carbon calculators” for Sears Canada, using Abstract and Factory design patterns to allow for rapid redeployment of new calculators, and to provide ability to combine calculators on a single page. Average time to establish new calculator: < 1 hour, including extracting graphics. Carbon Calculator were installed in Vancouver Robson store that used this applet.
Recommenations

“Matthew has great attention to detail and is a proactive problem solver.” —Jackie Reading, Sr Project Manager, Nurun, April 26, 2010

Senior Developer, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

January – November 2009 | XHTML, JavaScript, CSS, XSLT
  • Assisted with project to improve appearance, page structure, and accessibility of CIBC.com by redesigning HTML, ASP-based page templates, JavaScript and CSS.
  • Assisted with implementation of user experience enhancements and regular content updates to CIBC.com. Designed JavaScript/CSS technique to enable persistent low-visual-acuity accessibility features currently in use on CIBC.com.
  • Created operational maintenance guide for development and maintenance of XML-based ABM marketing campaigns. Guide included step-by-step instructions, in-depth explanation of the process, examples of input and output of the process and XML templates to reduce potential for error and increase efficiency of development. Templates allow new campaigns to be written and made available for testing in under fifteen minutes.
Recommenations

“Matthew has the ability to instantly translate visual mockups and designs into fully functional web pages – with little direction and oversight.” —Lucas Czuchraj, Graphic Designer, CIBC. November 2, 2009.

PHP Developer / Systems Administrator, Syncapse Corp

June – October 2008
  • Designed and development first-generation social-networking software for use on Facebook and MySpace platforms
  • Maintained local workstations and remote servers to maintain data integrity, service availability and reliable backups.
  • Created multi-platform discussion board to allow conversations to occur among Facebook, MySpace and iGoogle users.
  • Created content management software for delivery of "Perez Hilton" podcast to mobile phones.
Recommenations

“Matt is a smart and sharp individual who can switch hit between software development and sysadmin. He is well-read, inquisitive and an all around good person, who brings passion and detail to any situation put in front of him. I highly recommend Matt Coe to any company with a need for talent in software.” —Matt Kantor, Director of Software Development, Syncapse Corp. October 30, 2008.

Content Strategist, Rogers Communications Inc

August 2007 – May 2008
  • Maintained Rogers web presence: ensured that online content complies with company standards, including bilingual support for French- and English-speaking customers and regionalisation to ensure that customers in each province are not shown information about services to which they cannot subscribe.
  • Provided technical advising with respect to ongoing customer satisfaction surveys.

PHP Programmer and Developer, RAW Integrated Inc

February – June 2007
  • Redesigned and developed in-house client and project management tool. Implemented access control lists, group permissions inheritance, form generation and universal note-taking.
  • Provided RSS 2.0 feed generator and language-specific XML menu generator for labour union site CMS.
  • Provided store for local houseleague baseball website. Store permitted any number of items, item categories, options and customisations. Checkout process sent only the minimum necessary amount of information security and privacy purposes.
  • Designed and developed Web-based inventory management system for a printing house. Software allowed clients to request stock to be delivered the address of their choice. Provided notification for staff members in the event that stock of a particular item fell below an item-specific quantity.
  • Designed and developed a press release module for the in-house content management system. Created a method to insert a press release into other content pages at any point.

Volunteerism

Scouts Canada

Co-Group Commissioner, Kingston Centre Scouting Group (March 2025 – present)
  • Act as the manager of a team of volunteers in putting on the Scouts Canada program, ensuring that key priorities of impact, safety, quality, support, and growth are kept in focus.
  • Chair regular meetings of the full volunteer team to coordinate on cross-cutting concerns and projects, ensuring that relevant deadlines are met.
  • Promote regular, active community involvement in both outward community service and Group membership growth.
  • Ensure that the Group sets and works toward one-, three-, and five-year plans regarding program quality, growth, and financial sustainability.
  • Assume final responsibility for participant safety through managing volunteer screening, active programming risk management, and ensuring that proper procedures are followed in case of incidents.
  • Provide ongoing volunteer support through regular meeting visits, 1-on-1 conversations with volunteers, connecting volunteers to training opportunities, and timely recognition of volunteer accomplishments.
  • Switched from managing the local Troop to the full Group to cover a leave-of-absence in the commissioner at the time. Restarted regular committee meetings and have worked to install volunteers temporarily into committee roles, to better ensure future sustainability.
  • At the request of the national program support team, expanded work on “Troop Guidebook” to support Cub Scouts program, updating previous versions of the youth handbook to reflect the current program.
Contact Troop Scouter, Kingston Centre Scouts (September 2022 – March 2025)
  • Responsible for facilitating the Scout program according to national program quality standards, maintaining clear and open lines of communication with parents and Group Committee, acting as Scouter-in-charge for all section activities, and managing the Scouter team.
  • Participate in volunteer screening by interviewing prospective volunteers.
  • Re-introduced Scouts Canada to the Kingston Remembrance Day Parade.
Colony Scouter, Kingston Centre Beaver Scouts (occasional, September 2021 – September 2023)
Troop Scouter, Kingston Centre Scouts (September 2021 – September 2022)
Pack Scouter, Kingston Centre Cub Scouts (July 2021 – September 2022)
  • Assisted other Section Scouters and Group Committee members in facilitating the Scout program according to national program quality standards.
  • Provided administrative support in all my sections using internal attendance/badgework tracking tool.
Contact Troop Scouter, 403rd Toronto Sea Scouts (June 2019 – July 2021)
  • Same responsibilites as Contact Troop Scouter role above.
  • Created "Troop Guidebook" to supplement existing material and missing youth handbook in the new "Canadian Path" program, to general acclaim of other Scouters nationwide.
Colony Scouter, 403rd Toronto Beaver Scouts (September 2018 – July 2021)
Troop Scouter, 403rd Toronto Sea Scouts (September 2016 – May 2019)
  • Same responsibilities as Troop Scouter role, above.
  • Re-introduced Scouts Canada to the Toronto Old City Hall Remembrance Day Honour Guard.
Patrol Counsellor, 36th Halifax Scouts (March 2006 – January 2007)
  • Same responsibilities as Troop Souter role, above
Awards
Wood Badge II (completed August 2020)

Comprehensive, self-directed volunteer skills development training. Includes Scouting program delivery, outdoors skills, support of youth of diverse backgrounds and ability levels, as well as conflict resolution, management of other volunteers and parents, youth and volunteer recruiting, and youth and volunteer retention.

Commendations
  • Bar to the Medal for Good Service – 2025
  • Long Service Medal – 2024
  • Medal for Good Service – 2018
  • Certificate of Commendation – 2025
  • Certificate of Commendation – 2023
  • Certificate of Commendation – 2021
  • Certificate of Commendation – 2018

Others

  • Currently hold Standard First Aid certification, including CPR-C and AED (expires May 2027).
  • Archery Canada Range Safety Officer (since June 2024)
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