Tom Macdonald

Email: tm@thomas-macdonald.com | Phone: +436641188771

Website: www.thomas-macdonald.com | Location: Vienna, Austria

Summary

Results-oriented Technology Leader and Digital Infrastructure Consultant with over 15 years of experience. Excels in strategic planning, team leadership, and building robust technological infrastructures. Passionate about leveraging Kubernetes and AI technologies to level up engineering teams and solve complex business challenges.

Core Competencies

Strategic Leadership

  • • Technical Strategy & Vision
  • • Team Building & Mentoring
  • • Agile & Scrum Transformation
  • • Product Innovation & Roadmap

Infrastructure & DevOps

  • • Kubernetes & Cloud Native
  • • High-Performance Architecture
  • • System Scalability & Security
  • • DevOps Modernization

AI & Development

  • • AI Integration & LLM Workflows
  • • Full Stack Architecture
  • • Technical Due Diligence
  • • Multimedia & Video Tech

Experience

Digital Infrastructure Consultant

Vienna, Austria February 2025 - Current

DevOps and AI Consulting

  • Empowering engineering teams by leveling up their skills in Kubernetes and modern infrastructure practices.
  • Consulting on the implementation and possibilities of AI in the workplace to enhance productivity.
  • Architecting and building AI-ready websites and applications.

CTO

qibri GmbH, Vienna, Austria April 2024 - January 2025

Pre-seed startup CTO

  • Technical vision and strategy: Sales strategy input, Product ideation.
  • Product development: Spearheaded AI integration, usage monitoring, and reestablished test/backup functionality.
  • Team leadership: Mentoring, removing blockers, tie-breaking decisions, and enforcing testing discipline.
  • Innovation: AI research and integration.

Contract Development

with Bolldorf OG, Vienna, Austria May 2024 - Current

Custom development of an online tourism ecommerce application

Tech Lead

Bitmovin GmbH, Vienna, Austria June 2022 - March 2024

Initiated, designed and built a stable, extensible and high-performance Web player

  • Realized the need for a complementary approach to Player Technology based on market analysis. Launched the project, led design and development, and worked with Product to bring it to market.
    See: npmjs.com/package/@bitmovin/player-web-x
  • Redesigned the licensing backend for scale.

Engineering Manager

Bitmovin GmbH, Vienna, Austria February 2019 - May 2022

Oversaw development of the HTML5 web player

  • Led a team of 15 engineers, collaborating with Product and Customer Success to deliver a Web Player serving ~2B views per month.
  • Implemented agile methodologies, accelerating product development cycles by 50% and improving collaboration.
  • Responsible for 90% of the best engineering hires in the team and technical roadmap input.

Technical Advisor | Architect

Eldora.do, Switzerland June 2022 - April 2023

Web3 Metaverse

  • Defined technical strategy with the executive team.
  • Educated contributors on agile methodologies.
  • Managed overall system architecture and technology selection.

Lead Engineer

Yelster GmbH, Vienna, Austria Dec 2016 - Jan 2019

Maintained and enhanced one of the largest Wordpress installations worldwide (~7k websites)

  • Led a diverse, cross-technology team of 7 engineers.
  • Supported a team of ~100 webmasters and maintained helper services in a SOA layout.
  • Dropped web server RAM usage by 99.995% using a custom reverse proxy.

Freelance Software Consultant

Self-employed 2012 - Present

  • Developed multiple software projects (web and mobile).
  • Customer-oriented approach using innovation to save costs.

Education

Master of Science in Computer Science

Université de Nantes, France 2009

Writings