Rune Madsen
Senior Engineering Manager at Shopify
San Francisco, CA
I lead Retail Foundations at Shopify, six teams building the platform layer that powers Point of Sale for hundreds of thousands of merchants worldwide. I came to engineering management through design and product, which shapes how I think about building both software and teams. Before management, I was an iOS engineer at Apple, where I developed WWDC-featured notification extensions, and at Shopify, where I worked on the iOS app, Apple Watch app, and a mobile SDK for in-app selling with Apple Pay integration.
How I Lead
I stay close to the work. I have strong opinions about product and design, not just engineering, and I push on quality in both. I think good managers make the work better directly, not just by clearing paths for others. I care a lot about the people side too: helping engineers grow and building teams that take their craft seriously.
Career Highlights
Leading six teams (App Platform, Extensions, Kernel & Platform, Infrastructure & Services, and Developer Tooling) building the layer that every POS feature builds on. Around 30 engineers, 4 engineering managers, serving hundreds of thousands of merchants worldwide.
Led engineering for Shopify Inbox, the merchant messaging product. This is where I made the transition from individual contributor to engineering manager.
Worked on Find My Friends and Find My iPhone, apps used by hundreds of millions of people. Developed iOS 10 notification extensions featured at WWDC in the State of the Union.
Founded and ran my own app studio. Shipped Next TTC for Toronto transit commuters and open-sourced RMSwipeTableViewCell, which topped Objective-C GitHub rankings when released.
Background
My background is unconventional: marketing degree, self-taught iOS, indie app studio, then a full career in software. That studio shipped real products: a transit app used daily by Toronto commuters and open source that topped GitHub's Objective-C rankings. From there I moved into full-time software development, worked across a number of startups, joined Shopify as an iOS engineer, spent a year at Apple, then came back to Shopify where I have grown into senior management over eight years. The design and product sensibility from that path isn't a footnote. It shapes how I work.