# Josh McVey
> Lead SDET. I improve processes by leveraging relationships and understanding the motivations and incentives underneath them.

## Contact

name: Josh McVey
location: Lawrence, Kansas, United States
email: yersh13@gmail.com
linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshmcvey
github: https://github.com/y3rsh
website: https://joshmcvey.com


## Headline

Lead SDET, Build & Release manager, and process operator. Twenty years across QA strategy, test automation architecture, SDET, platform engineering, and software delivery.


## Summary

- Lead SDET at Opentrons. Not the deepest expert in any single stack — the person who reads the situation, finds creative paths when resources are lean, and improves how the work gets done between idea and production.
- Improves CI/CD, release cadence, test strategy, and cross-team coordination by leveraging relationships and understanding the motivations and incentives underneath them.
- Manages Build & Release for two robot OSes and the full Opentrons application suite while still cutting versions, tags, and deployments alongside the team.
- Owns Protocol Library, Opentrons Accounts, and authentication/authorization across web products; full-stack contributor on Opentrons AI.
- Early adopter of AI tools — daily user, writes Cursor skills, project rules, and workflows that make AI operational for the team.


## Target roles

- Lead SDET and platform engineering
- Build & Release management and Developer Experience
- Consulting and trusted-advisor engagements for process repair


## Good fit

- Process improvement across release pipelines, test strategy, and cross-team handoffs
- Brittle or missing test infrastructure
- Making AI-assisted development operational for a team
- Hard problems where relationships, motivations, and incentives are part of the solution
- One person who does architectural thinking and implementation


## Not a fit

- Raw scaling problems on massive distributed systems as the primary mandate


## Strengths (human site)

### Lead SDET and platform
Full-stack on Protocol Library, Opentrons Accounts, and OAuth/OIDC, and owner of the build and release pipelines that ship the robot software suite. I lead test automation across the full robot stack — on-robot systems, desktop apps, and the HTTP API — and mentor engineers in testing. Quality is built in, automated as much as possible, and starts before the code is written. Quality is not a phase.

### Process improvement
I improve delivery processes — release pipelines, test strategy, cross-team handoffs — by building the relationships and understanding the motivations and incentives underneath them. Comfortable in the architecture room and in standup the same week.

### Build & Release and Developer Experience
I manage Opentrons Build & Release and still cut versions, tags, and deployments alongside the team. Release cadence and the small details that keep robot software and cloud apps shipping on schedule.


## Skills

### leadership
Build & Release management, Team standups, Cross-team release coordination

### delivery
CI/CD, GitHub Actions, AWS, Release tagging and deployment

### engineering
Python, TypeScript, Java, pytest, OAuth/OIDC, GraphQL, Docker, Kubernetes/OpenShift, Helm

### quality
SDET, Test automation architecture, API testing, BDD/TDD, UAT automation

### observability
Datadog

### ai
Cursor skills and rules, AI-assisted feature delivery, OpenAI/Amplify integrations


## Experience

### Opentrons Labworks Inc. | Lead Software Engineer and Build & Release Manager | 2024-02 to present
location: Remote / Queens, NY (company HQ)
- Lead Build & Release for two robot OSes and the full Opentrons application suite.
- Still hands-on on versions, tags, and deployments with the team.
- Improve delivery efficiency, test automation, and cross-team release coordination.
- Full-stack on Opentrons AI and Protocol Library.
- Own authentication and authorization across all web products.

### Opentrons Labworks Inc. | Senior Developer and SDET | 2021-06 to present
location: Remote / Queens, NY (company HQ)
- Architect and operate Protocol Library (https://library.opentrons.com) and Opentrons Accounts.
- CI/CD with GitHub Actions and AWS.
- Monitoring and incident detection with Datadog.
- Release and test frameworks that shortened robot software release cycles.

### TEKsystems | Test Automation Architect (Practice Architect, Continuous Testing) | 2019-08 to 2021-06
location: Remote
- Led pytest automation for a gaming engine team of 10.
- Led browser UAT in Azure DevOps for energy-sector .com testing with a team of 5.

### Rackspace | Software Developer, Test III | 2016-11 to 2019-08
location: Remote
- Lead SDET on dedicated-device web portal.
- Customer-facing web apps, ETL, and APIs.
- Python, Java, TypeScript, Jenkins, OpenShift, Docker, GraphQL, Elasticsearch.

### Xpanxion | Test Architect / Lead Automation Engineer | 2009-12 to 2016-11
location: Remote
- Long-term QA strategy and automation consulting.
- Frameworks for web, API, ETL, mobile, and desktop.
- BDD/TDD with Cucumber, JUnit, TestNG; performance with JMeter and LoadRunner.

### Epiq Systems, Standard Beverage, Target, self-employed | Earlier software, QA, and IT roles | 2003-05 to 2012-11
location: Kansas / Nebraska / remote
- C# and Selenium automation, QA leadership for enterprise web and ETL.
- Retail operations leadership at Target.
- Nonprofit web, AV, and database work as independent contractor.


## Education

- Kansas State University: BS, Physical Sciences (1996 to 2003)


## Certifications

- CTFL (ISTQB Certified Tester Foundation Level)


## How I work with AI

- I adore this stuff. I adopt new AI tools the day they ship and find ways to use them creatively in real development work — not as a demo, not as a slide deck.
- In practice that means Cursor skills, project rules, and repeatable workflows that stay useful as the models change. It shows up in shipping: Opentrons AI features, robot interaction clients in TypeScript and Python, and the glue scripts that keep releases and tests honest. I treat AI as infrastructure for thinking and execution, then harden what works into something the team can run without me in the loop.
- Early adopter — picks up new AI tools the day they ship and folds them into real development work.
- Uses AI tools daily in production development work, not as a demo.
- Writes Cursor skills, project rules, and repeatable workflows that survive model changes.
- Shipped Opentrons AI features and TypeScript/Python robot interaction clients.


## Selected open source (github.com/y3rsh)

- flex-talk (TypeScript): TypeScript client for the Opentrons Flex HTTP API. https://github.com/y3rsh/flex-talk
- ot-uv (Python): use uv to simulate Opentrons protocols. https://github.com/y3rsh/ot-uv
- ot-analyze (Python): Github action to analyze Opentrons protocols. https://github.com/y3rsh/ot-analyze
- protocol-parameters (Python): Documentation of protocol parameters in the Protocol Library. https://github.com/y3rsh/protocol-parameters
- amplify-example (TypeScript): AWS Amplify Gen 2 Connected to OpenAI API Assitant. https://github.com/y3rsh/amplify-example
- josh (CSS): Josh McVey personal site (Astro + Cloudflare Pages). https://github.com/y3rsh/josh


## Canonical URLs

home: https://joshmcvey.com
resume pdf: https://joshmcvey.com/resume.pdf
resume markdown: https://joshmcvey.com/resume.md
resume plain text: https://joshmcvey.com/resume.txt
llms: https://joshmcvey.com/llms.txt

Last updated: 2026-05-25 (generated at build from https://joshmcvey.com)