Noah Woodward

Noah Woodward

Senior Software Engineer in San Francisco, He/Him

About

Building products for entrepreneurs @ Shopify.

Projects

2023

Technologies: ElasticSearch, Ruby on Rails, React Native, React Native Web, OpenAI embeddings

Worked full stack to develop a search query leveraging ElasticSearch for performant search and indexing of customer conversations enabling fuzzy search functionality. Wrote the Ruby on Rails functionality to support the client to make requests to ElasticSearch, and developed a debounced search mechanism on the client for real-time search results.

2023

Technologies: React Native, React for admin web, OpenAI embeddings

Worked on initial prototype of a chat bot that would auto reply to customer conversations, using OpenAI APIs and internal data pipelines with the data needed to create embeddings, summarize conversations, and generate conversations from a GPT prompt

2023
Migration from REST legacy API to GraphQL for Shopify Inbox at Shopify

Technologies: React Native, GraphQL, Apollo Client, Codegen with Apollo

Project lead to design the migration path of a large scale React Native chat application from REST to GraphQL. Created a phased cutover path and identified code dependencies between modules to identify high-risk migration changes. Built new codegen infrastructure to allow for better type safety with Typescript. Set up monitoring around app performance and segmentation for crash rate between migration groups.

2023
Inbox Customer Context in Chat at Shopify

Technologies: React Native, Websockets

Architected data infrastructure that allowed for the stitching of data across multiple data sources to allow for real time customer context while a buyer is shopping on the online store. Feature was a major driver for merchant conversion while assisting customers. Built frontend interface to surface this information.

2022
Customer Image and Video Sharing support at Shopify

Technologies: React Native, React Native Web, Google Cloud services

Sole contributor to a key chat feature to allow for image and video sharing, identified release blocking bottlenecks in the video processing service infrastructure maintained by other teams and worked to prevalidate the video/image content on client before processing began to avert the bottleneck and unblock the team from releasing the feature.

2022
Shopify Inbox Notification Management at Shopify

Technologies: React Native, and React for web infrastructure

Led the design of frontend infrastructure to manage notifications for the Shopify Inbox application. Created the schema design and frontend implementation for a complex notification management system which was the leading cause of large merchant churn. The infrastructure that was built on the frontend was a new component library that allowed for a consistent design between Shopify Admin system management. Managed to sync notification status across client and create a new notification onboarding system allowing the merchant to try out their new settings before saving

2021

Worked on cross-functional team to bring the object staging area feature to both our Android, iOS,l and Web applications. This feature enabled merchants to quickly confirm and send products, discounts, and images to prospective buyers.

2021

Contributor on the buildout of bringing an iOS, and Android client directly to Web while leveraging React Native Web to reuse shared components from our React Native codebase. Spearheaded feature development specifically for web to provide the best User Experience possible for the platform

2021

Worked with a team of client engineers to rebrand the Shopify Ping product to Shopify Inbox which directly integrated the product into Shopify Admin to bring live chat to a larger audience. Worked in React Native to create a client on web(React Native Web), iOS, and Android.

2020
Store Hours for Chat Availability at Shopify

Co-lead development for a high-demand feature for merchants to establish availability hours so that they can send automated messages to potential buyers stating that they are away right now. Worked with backend engineers to design schemas and to ensure real-time syncing with the merchant's storefront

Side Projects

Ongoing

Built an iOS application to learn SwiftUI and skeleton backend and landing page for an application where gifting is made easy

Work Experience

2023 — Now

Building communication products for merchants as part of the messaging group of Shopify. Initially worked as a native iOS engineer with Swift but transitioned to using React Native where I now work on iOS, Android, and Web for Shopify Inbox

2019 — Now
San Francisco

Building communication products for merchants as part of the messaging group of Shopify. Initially worked as a native iOS engineer with Swift but transitioned to using React Native where I now work on iOS, Android, and Web for Shopify Inbox

GitHub