Dermot Dooley
I'm an engineering leader based in Dublin.
Fifteen years in software, the last eight leading teams.
I work on the people side first. The engineering tends to follow.
• Thirteen years at CarTrawler, from front-end developer to Senior Engineering Manager, including a stint running the whole department as Interim Director of Engineering.
• The part I like most is the people. I manage managers, lead multiple teams, and spend most of my energy making sure engineers are supported, challenged, and able to do their best work. Happy teams build better products.
• Day to day that means aligning roadmaps to company strategy, removing blockers, and making sure what we ship grows the business.
• I started out writing code, and it still helps. I know what engineers need, what frustrates them, and what good work looks like.
• For how I operate under pressure, my strengths, and my growth areas, see my Leadership Profile, built on a Hogan Leadership Assessment.
Recommendations
What colleagues say about working with me
“Over 10 years at CarTrawler, I’ve had the opportunity to see Dermot grow into a highly capable engineering leader with broad organisational impact. He offers a rare blend of technical credibility, strategic thinking and people-centred leadership. Any organisation seeking to evolve and strengthen its engineering capability would benefit greatly from his leadership.”
Deirdre Monaghan
Head of Portfolio Governance @ CarTrawler
Worked together for 10+ years“I couldn't recommend Dermot highly enough from my time working with him in Cartrawler. His technical expertise and product knowledge meant you could always go to him in confidence knowing he could support and guide you. Encouragement and openness are the 2 words that immediately stick out for me from my time reporting to him as a DX engineering manager! He is a leader who takes accountability and never shies away.”
Gary Fox
Developer Experience Engineering Manager @ CarTrawler
Reported to Dermot“Dermot brings an enormous creativity to everything that he does - he is a natural born innovator, always seeking to find new ways to elevate our ways of working and solve for important problems that others may have missed. Enormously popular with his colleagues and inspiring in his approach, Dermot is both a very strong 'people first' manager but also an extremely impressive engineer, well able to grasp in-depth technical details and recommend practical routes forward.”
Jim Killeen
Senior Software Engineering Manager @ CarTrawler
Colleague at CarTrawler🏢 Experience
Thirteen years at CarTrawler, front-end developer to interim Director of Engineering.
🌟 Leadership Style
Hogan assessment insights, strengths, and development focus.
🎓 Education
MSc Creative Digital Media (TU Dublin). BSc Computer Programming (IADT).
Building with AI, hands on
I still write code. This year most of it has been with Claude: shipping side projects end to end, and using agents to clear work that had been stuck for years.
botwatch.game
Live Premier League commentary from Claude-powered bots that take on each club's fan personality and banter with real supporters.
Partner docs migration with agents
Moved CarTrawler's integration docs off a Sphinx toolchain that only one person could publish, after earlier attempts had failed.
Weather station revival
A Raspberry Pi station whose vendor backend went dark, rebuilt on Supabase and Astro and feeding Weather Underground and Windy.
Get in touch
Hiring for a senior engineering leadership role, or just want to talk shop? Email me.
More about me
When I'm not managing engineering teams I'm with my wife and two boys, attempting golf, or riding a motorcycle across Europe.
