NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESS Newswire / February 17, 2026 / Originally published on GoDaddy Resource Library
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your career journey to date.
I'm Erin, a Software Development Engineer on the Domain Registrars and Investors (DRI) Data Engineering team based in Edmonton, Alberta. I work primarily on managing all data-related requests and support for our ads platform project as well as owning the data sources for the main search engine results page.
I attained my Bachelors and Masters degrees in computing science at the University of Alberta, having pivoted through a few different streams of STEM before discovering a love of coding and logic problems in my second year of undergrad. I started my career at Intuit as a Software Engineer where I got my first taste of writing production-ready code, CI/CD, agile processes and the tech industry. I missed getting to wrangle large, complex and disparate datasets so I made the switch to working in a more data-focused role at GoDaddy in 2022.
Since joining the company, I've had the opportunity to dive into a large range of problems across many different surfaces and have gained a ton of new skills, both technically and personally.
How do you prioritize your work when you're pulled in multiple directions?
It can be difficult to not just prioritize by whoever is pushing me the hardest when working on a variety of projects across Business Units, which I do quite a bit of. When faced with multiple requests, I typically prioritize by assessing the return on investment, allowing me to select the most impactful task first. However, if I am the final blocker for a release or receive a bug fix request, I make it a point to address those immediately, regardless of the project, as I believe they should take precedence. I also find it useful to evaluate how long a request will take. Taking on a tiny story when I'm in a rut or bogged down in a large item is so satisfying and Project Managers are often grateful for quick turnaround in these instances. One challenge I often face when managing competing priorities is feeling overwhelmed by multiple people requesting tasks or updates at the same time. To address this, I make it a point to close Slack and devote my full attention to the most important task I've identified. This helps me avoid distractions and stay focused, since I'm easily sidetracked when Slack is open.
What's the most challenging yet rewarding thing that you've worked on at GoDaddy?
In my work on our ad platform system that I inherited, I had to create a brand new conversion association pipeline in 2025. My team had a number of other conversion association systems for different projects but they all functioned differently and used different, often older, data sources. I took the time to hunt around in some of the newer traffic data tables for anything I could use that uniquely identified an ad placement and eventually found exactly what I needed to make a perfect association from an ad to a purchase. This feature also required me to meet with stakeholders to figure out what specific rules to apply when identifying conversions. In the end, I created a standardized ruleset and wrote a flexible enough solution that no rework has been needed as we've expanded ad placements to new pages but is still robust and trustworthy.
What's one piece of advice you wish you had received earlier in your career?
Early on in my career I was told repeatedly to speak up more in meetings, make myself seen and heard. As an introverted person and especially a young woman in a male-dominated field I found that advice challenging and stressful to attempt to adhere to. I wish I had instead been told that it's totally okay to follow-up after a meeting with a more senior member of your team to ask questions in a more comfortable setting. It took me years to get comfortable speaking my mind in cross team meetings especially with senior leadership present and I know now that was okay and I didn't damage my career being a wallflower. I got there in the end and it's okay that it took me some time.
If you had to describe GoDaddy in one word, what would it be and why?
Friendly. Whether I'm posting a question in a large channel or pinging someone directly, the people I interact daily with are not only helpful but generally happy to unblock me and friendly to deal with.
What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
In the warmer months, I try to get outside as much as possible, taking advantage of the largest contiguous urban trail system in Canada on my doorstep by cycling, running and walking through the North Saskatchewan River valley. In the winter, I switch to ice skating and make a few downhill skiing trips each year, often with family. I'm still chasing my first goal with the co-ed soccer team I play on alongside my partner, and I haven't conquered a V5 at the local bouldering gym (yet). In 2025, I also picked up embroidery, and now I have more project ideas than I'll ever find time to complete!
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View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire:
https://www.accessnewswire.com/newsroom/en/telecommunications/finding-focus-meet-erin-macdonald-1138055
