I am a world-class software developer living in Atlantic Canada. For five years, I was focused on iOS development, but my area of interest broadened and now I do many things. I’m keenly interested in TypeScript, ReactNative, and GraphQL. I’m married with two cats. I contributed to open source so much that it brainwashed me. I’ve written books, I’ve made photos, and I’ve played guitar.
Community is incredibly important to me; I’ve only been able to accomplish what I have because of the kindness and generosity of others. I owe it to the people who helped me to help others now, which is why I volunteered with Coalition for Queens and ran a Peer Lab every week in New York for five years.
If you want to get in touch, Mastodon is probably the best way to reach me. You can also email ash@ashfurrow.com.
Over my career, I’ve been fortunate to work at some amazing places.
After reflecting on what I wanted, I prioritized finding a workplace with good people using cool technology to do something worthwhile. I joined Float in 2023 because it checked those boxes for me.
My first job was to lead development of the Float mobile application. Since then, I’ve been leveraging my experience leading mobile-first product teams to ship products and features to save Canadian businesses time and money.
Working in a Series A startup gives me the autonomy to drive changes across any part of our technical stack, as well as drive forward our company’s culture. Empathy helps me understand our customers, experience helps me scale up our technical platform, and communication skills help me identify and execute on the most important thing at any given time.
I’m proud of what I have accomplished so far and I’m grateful for the chance to work with such a talented group of people.
The ecommerce products I helped build at Artsy catered to the fine art market. Shopify, in contrast, is working to “make commerce better for everyone.” It was the everyone in that mission that resonated with me. It drew attention to a void that had grown in my heart.
I worked on the Shop app since joining Shopify. My deep expertise in React Native allowed me to push myself in many directions; my role as Senior Staff Developer afforded me the autonomy to decide where I would drive the most impact.
My largest contribution was Shop Minis, a React Native SDK for third parties to build native-quality shopping experiences. I held the technical vision for the SDK, even as the Shop app itself was iterating towards product-market fit. First I started building the SDK on my own, then I built up a team to deliver our internal prototype, then finally I oversaw two teams delivering a private alpha to launch partners. You can read more about the public SDK launch here.
I joined Artsy in New York to help accomplish their ambitious goal: a future where art is as popular as music. That vision resonated with me, and for seven years I was proud to work towards it. After building Artsy software in TypeScript, Swift, Objective-C, Ruby, Scala – whatever it took – I moved to technical leadership. I am most proud of leading the migration to Artsy’s mobile-first product strategy.
Most of the code I worked on is open source and I wrote a lot on Artsy’s Engineering Blog.
After learning the importance of design at 500px, I moved to Canada’s leading design agency, Teehan+Lax, to learn more. I developed keen collaboration skills while working closely with designers and clients to realize outstanding products.
500px was a site that aimed to host the world’s best photography. Like Flickr, but only for your best shots. I developed their first iPad app, and later led the iOS team to ship the new universal app.