Frances McMullin
Consulting, Maintenance and improvement of technical systems
Technical Expertise
I have experience developing, maintaining and optimising a variety of technical systems. I've managed self hosted systems using Ruby on Rails and organised integrations between WordPress, payment systems, CRM systems and other third party applications.
Analysis, Planning & Decision Making
Getting to grips with the available data, managing key metrics to inform decisions and supporting a well informed planning process.
Communication
Commitment to clearly communicating the limitations and opportunities of technical systems. Developing and delivering new documentation and training as needed.
Key Technical Categories
While I'm happy troubleshooting any system, I have deep experience with Ruby, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript and React. I have managed deployments on Heroku, Render and AWS.
Flexibility & Transparency
As an independent contractor, I aim to work in a way that works for you, while setting clear expectations. For some clients, that means a weekly checkin, and reserving specific hours or days when I'll be available for your requests, for others we might meet less frequently as needed.
Services
I can provide support by maintaining existing systems with updates and troubleshooting problems. I can optimise or improve existing processes, automating data transfers, setting up or developing integrations between systems. I'm also happy to develop new functionality or tools, with due regard to sustainability, training and proper documentation.
Santi van den Toorn
Head of Tech, De Goede Zaak
Frances is a great help for any technical project. Her knowledge and experience are extensive, she is a clear and effective communicator and she is simply very pleasant to work with. Frances is always willing to lend a hand and come up with creative solutions, even in high-pressure, ad-hoc, situations which unfortunately often happen in tech ;). I highly recommend collaborating with Frances to anyone who values professionalism, integrity, transparent communication, and expert-level technical skills across a wide range of subjects.
Emily Duffy
Director, Parable Grassroots Communications
I worked with Frances for more than three years at Uplift and I would highly recommend her to anyone. Frances is incredibly technically knowledgeable, talented and efficient. She is both strategic and able to respond to emerging problems and issues. Frances also has a special talent for communicating with non technical members of staff and really listening to what their technical needs are, as well being very detail oriented and able to predict and mitigate potential issues. She was a patient, reliable and kind colleague and I hugely enjoyed solving technical problems with her.
Brian Cuthbert
Director of Campaigns & Technology
I've worked with Frances for a number of years now and would highly recommend her to anyone. Frances is extremely technically skilled but is also great at explaining what work needs to be done, what our options are and is always very clear and transparent when it comes to workload estimates and giving project updates. Our team has come to Frances with very bespoke requests and she has helped us to identify the best course of action. I really appreciate how well she explains technical challenges in ways that everyone can understand.
Juna Ootoovak
Technical Director, OPEN
Frances is an exceptional technologist I would jump at the chance to work with again. She is extremely capable working in multiple different web development languages, managing to deliver quality code on schedule. I was Frances’s co-worker and manager and managed her as a Team Lead. Whether it was an engineering or a management work I knew if Frances was holding it I wouldn’t have to worry about it getting done. If you want a great engineer, team lead, consultant, or manager, hire Frances.
Laura James
CTO, the Online Progressive Engagement Network, 2020-2022
During my time at the OPEN, Frances worked with me both as a contractor developing and supporting OPEN's shared source software platforms, and collaboratively within the Network as technical lead at Uplift. In both roles Frances was a consistently thoughtful and dedicated technologist, who always proactively engaged with planning and coordination of software development and deployment. I could rely on Frances for consistent delivery of stable software releases, solid estimations and risk assessments, and clear communication of progress, obstacles and opportunities - very helpful for me as a non-specialist tech leader. Frances has strong technical skills and knowledge, and I hugely valued her contributions to our work on technology strategy and development planning. She worked well in a team/community setting and also as an independent contributor, and was particularly talented at patiently and skillfully helping others, with bug fixing or problem solving or tech planning.