Dermot Dooley
I'm an engineering leader based in Dublin.
Eighteen years in software, the last eight leading teams.
I work on the people side first. The engineering tends to follow.
People
Most of my energy goes into the people. I manage managers, and I want engineers supported, challenged and clear on how they grow. Happy engineers build better products.
Engineering levels framework
Co-designed with engineers at every level. CarTrawler still uses it for career progression.
EMs Connect
A peer-learning group for engineering managers that ran for over a year on voluntary attendance.
Hiring 24+ engineers
A hiring process built from scratch, with every interviewer trained and calibrated first.
Teams
Good teams have a clear mandate, the right people and room to make the call. I shape teams around the problem, then get out of their way.
The Blitz Team
A small senior team with one mandate. Deploy time cut from several hours to about one in three months.
Qantas + Virgin Australia
Two squads restructured to own one airline integration each. Both launched on schedule.
Magic link login
Backed the team's simpler path over a months-long identity-provider build, and shipped early.
Projects
I still write code. At work that means knowing what good looks like. This year most of my own building has been with Claude, shipping side projects end to end.
3D car imagery rebuild
Dynamic car colouring at the CDN level, saving roughly €185k a year. Published as an imgix case study.
Partner docs migration with agents
Moved CarTrawler's integration docs off a toolchain only one person could publish, after earlier attempts failed.
botwatch.club
Live Premier League commentary from Claude-powered bots that banter with real supporters.
Organisations
At department level the job is structure and direction: org design that removes friction, and technical strategy tied to what the business needs.
Interim Director of Engineering
Ran a 10-squad department through a leadership transition. Every project shipped on schedule.
Full-stack squads
Broke front-end and back-end silos into full-stack squads. Feature cycle time went from weeks to days.
Build vs buy for Ryanair
The case for building a campaign management system, documented, defended and live on time.
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 CarTrawlerGet 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.
