SHAWN SNIDER
Ottawa · Open to the right role, local or remote

SHAWN SNIDER

I build complicated things and make them usable.

I started my career writing software. Nineteen years later, I was running a nearly CAD $40M global software business.

In between, I designed products from a blank page, authored key parts of a live-television interoperability standard, including its secure 4.0 version, received a Technology & Engineering Emmy, built platforms other teams chose to adopt, ran cloud services under a live-television SLA, and integrated acquisitions.

I still build software, because I like building software.

See what I've built Download resume PDF
LinkedIn GitHub Email The receipts ↓
Shawn Snider, smiling, in a dark blazer and t-shirt
2007 developer
2026 still shipping
Emmy

2016 Technology & Engineering Emmy for MOS, the standard that lets live-TV systems work together. I authored its web plug-ins and MOS 4.0.

CAD $5M→$40M

Growth of the global software business I ran as VP & General Manager.

160+

People at peak, including about 120 engineering professionals across nine countries.

500+

OverDrive deployments worldwide, integrated with 250+ first- and third-party systems.

1,500

Commits to Slate in its first six weeks. Written this year, after the VP job.

01 The short version

I started as the person writing the code.

I joined Ross Video in 2007 as a software developer on OverDrive, a system that lets a small crew run an entire live-television control room.

One of the first big things I built from scratch became Inception, a newsroom system I originally designed and developed. I sat with the people producing live news, turned the way they actually worked into software, and watched it grow from an idea into a multimillion-dollar business.

The best product decisions happened when I understood a problem well enough to separate the complexity users needed from the complexity the software should absorb for them.

Then the scope kept getting bigger: team lead, product manager, director, and in 2018 Vice President of Production Workflow & Cloud Services. In practice that meant general manager of a global software business, with product, engineering, cloud operations, support, sales, marketing and the P&L all reporting up to one place.

The business grew from about CAD $5M to nearly CAD $40M a year and became one of Ross's highest-margin businesses. At peak: 160+ people, one senior director and six directors, teams in nine countries.

Scale was never the interesting part. The interesting part was letting that many people build products that still felt coherent, and staying close enough to the technology to know which decisions actually mattered.

Nineteen years, roughly

  1. 2001Founded GamingExcellenceA gaming publication I ran for thirteen years, through university and my early years at Ross.
  2. 2007Software developer, Ross VideoOverDrive production automation. Carleton Software Engineering, High Distinction.
  3. 2007–2014Designer, developer, then team lead on InceptionLead architect of the web platform later Ross products were built on.
  4. 2013Authored web-based plug-ins for MOSHTML5 controls replacing ActiveX. Adopted in 2016, part of MOS 2.8.5.
  5. 2014Product managementAgile transformation: 18-month release cycles to quarterly.
  6. 2015–2017Director of Product ManagementOverDrive, Inception and Streamline.
  7. 2017Technology & Engineering EmmyThe 2016 award for MOS, presented in 2017.
  8. 2018Authored MOS 4.0Secure MOS over WebSockets, designated the protocol’s fourth major version.
  9. 2018–2026VP & GM, Production Workflow & Cloud Services11+ product lines, the Primestream acquisition, SaaS operations, four NAB keynotes.
  10. 2022Executive MBA, Cornell & Queen'sDual degree, with Distinction from Cornell.
  11. 2026Building Slate. Choosing what's next.Product person and engineer again.

02 See what I've built

From writing the first version to running the portfolio.

Over nineteen years my relationship with these products kept changing. First I wrote the code, then I decided what should be built, then I led the teams, and finally I was accountable for the whole business around them.

Inception

Builder→Team lead→Product→Executive

Newsroom software for planning, writing and running live broadcasts.

I designed and developed the first version of Inception. The hard problem wasn't replacing a newsroom application. It was understanding how journalists, producers and control-room crews coordinate a live show, then turning that messy, deadline-driven workflow into software people could trust under pressure.

I went from writing the architecture and workflow model, to leading the engineering team, to managing the product, to owning the business around it as an executive. It's my career in miniature.

My role
Original designer & developer, engineering lead, product leadership, executive ownership
Outcome
0-to-1 product → multimillion-dollar annual business, still an active Ross product
Also
Its web technology became the foundation for later Ross web products and SaaS deployments

OverDrive

Dev→PM→Dir→VP

Production automation that lets a small team run a live television control room.

OverDrive was my first product at Ross and later one of the most important in the portfolio I led. My problems changed with my role: shipping individual capabilities, then defining workflows and direction, then setting the ecosystem and investment strategy.

What it taught me

At 250+ integrations, the ecosystem became a product problem of its own. Partners changed APIs, products were retired, and customers still expected everything to work on air that night.

Interoperability isn't an implementation detail. At scale, it is the product.

Scale
500+ customer deployments · 250+ first- and third-party integrations
Best of Show · IBC2024

Streamline

PM→Dir→VP

Media asset management that makes huge video libraries findable and usable.

Streamline started with a customer problem, not an existing product. I took it from discovery through definition, UX, architecture and launch, then oversaw how it grew.

After launch

When Ross acquired Primestream in 2020, I led due diligence and integration: combining distributed teams and technology while protecting existing customers on both sides and aligning the portfolio into one media-management strategy.

Later, my teams added AI-powered video indexing and transcription, so large libraries became searchable by what's actually said and shown in them.

My role
0-to-1 incubation, product strategy, acquisition integration, executive ownership
Best of Show · NAB Show 2025 (Streamline Pro)

Media I/O

VP / GM

Browser-based video ingest and playout, rebuilt from acquired technology.

Media I/O came to Ross through the Primestream acquisition. Rather than preserve the legacy complexity, we rethought it: a much simpler workflow, modern web technology, and our shared Aura design system underneath.

It became one of the fastest-growing products in Ross's history, and the clearest evidence that the shared-platform strategy was working.

My role
Executive product & engineering leadership, acquisition integration, product transformation
3× Best of Show · NAB Show 2024 Pro AV Best in Market 2024

Quorum

VP / GM

Automated production for legislatures, councils and public meetings.

Quorum took what we'd learned automating live television into a completely different domain. Agendas, speakers, votes, video, graphics and the public record all have to come together, with the control formal proceedings require and often a single operator.

The Texas House of Representatives deployment covered the main chamber and 16 committee rooms, and the House passed a resolution congratulating Ross on the award it won.

My role
Executive product & engineering ownership, investment and portfolio strategy
NAB Show Project of the Year 2025 Best of Show · ISE 2026 Pro AV Best in Market 2024

Aura & platforms

Architect→VP / Platform

The shared React framework, design system and back-end services behind Ross's web products.

Aura's customers were other product teams. Instead of every team separately solving navigation, components, accessibility and app architecture, they could build on one foundation. Alongside it, I led shared back-end services for licensing, orchestration, platform management and cloud.

Why adoption wasn't mandated

We could have required teams to use it. We chose not to. If another team was going to depend on the platform, it had to make their product better and their team faster, or it didn't deserve to exist.

Aura became the foundation under Ross's web portfolio, including the award-winning Media I/O experience.

My role
Platform strategy, UX leadership, organizational adoption, executive sponsorship

Indigo

VP / GM+Key designer

One browser-based platform for the entire production workflow, from ingest to publish.

As the portfolio grew, individually strong products stopped being enough. Customers wanted the whole workflow to behave like one system. Indigo was the answer: a long-term product and platform strategy connecting workflows that had always been separate, including Inception, Streamline and Media I/O.

I was one of its key designers, working across product boundaries to define how the pieces fit together and what the platform underneath had to do. My teams also built in AI video analysis and metadata enrichment using models developed in-house.

It closed my final NAB keynote as the "one more thing." The first product I ever designed ended up inside the last one.

My role
Product vision, cross-portfolio architecture, executive sponsorship, AI strategy
Milestone
Launched at NAB Show 2026

What platforms taught me

A platform is a product. Internal teams are customers. Adoption is earned.

Products are ultimately judged by what customers do with them.

EmmyTechnology & Engineering2016 · my individual technical contribution to MOS 3×Best of Show, NAB 2024Media I/O 2025NAB Project of the YearQuorum at the Texas House of Representatives IBCBest of Show 2024OverDrive NABBest of Show 2025Streamline Pro ISEBest of Show 2026Quorum

Product awards shown here were earned by products and teams in my portfolio during my tenure. They are the teams' awards as much as anyone's. The Technology & Engineering Emmy recognizes my individual technical contribution to the MOS standards effort.

03 The Emmy

The time a software protocol earned me an Emmy.

A live newscast runs on equipment from a dozen manufacturers: newsroom software, video servers, graphics, automation, teleprompters. They all have to exchange information reliably, often while the show is on the air.

MOS, the Media Object Server protocol, is one of the standards that makes that possible. The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences recognized its development and standardization with the 2016 Technology & Engineering Emmy, presented in 2017, and I received one for my contributions. I authored two of the biggest changes in the protocol's history.

MOS 2.8.5Web-based plug-ins, replacing ActiveX

Vendor tools used to live inside newsroom systems as Windows-only ActiveX controls. In 2013, as team lead on Inception, I wrote the proposal to replace them with HTML5 web controls that run in any modern browser. The MOS Group adopted it by acclamation at NAB 2016, and it became the HTML5 Web Control specification in MOS 2.8.5.

MOS 4.0Secure MOS over WebSockets

As newsrooms moved onto IT networks and into the cloud, MOS still had no real encryption. I authored the proposal that moved the protocol to secure WebSockets, with authentication and a new Passive Mode that lets a system inside a firewall work with systems outside it without opening inbound ports. The MOS Group designated it version 4.0 in 2018, and it is now the MOS 4.0 standard.

“Exceeding, in complexity, the total work produced by the MOS Group in its first four or five years.”

The Emmy nomination, describing my HTML5 work, as reported by Sports Video Group

Standards succeed when complicated systems built by different companies simply work together. Viewers never see it. That's exactly the point.

It's one of the things I'm proudest of. Not because of the trophy, but because it's the kind of engineering I love most: solving a hard systems problem once, in a way an entire industry can build on.

Technology & Engineering Emmy Award
2016 award, presented 2017 · National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences · Development and standardization of the MOS protocol

The receipts · web-based plug-ins

The receipts · MOS 4.0

The receipts · record & press

Newsroom system rundowns · stories HTML5 plug-in Graphics vendor A Video server vendor B Teleprompter vendor C Automation vendor D MOS 4.0 · wss:// · live
Different companies' systems, one shared language. Web-based plug-ins let vendor tools run inside any modern newsroom editor instead of Windows-only ActiveX controls, and MOS 4.0 carries the same messages over encrypted WebSockets, across firewalls and into the cloud.

04 What I'm building now

Slate

I wanted to see what I could build when I was both the product person and the engineer again.

Slate is a home control system: wall-mounted tablets in every room, one server in the basement that owns every integration, and no app to open. It started as my own, slightly ridiculous, home automation project. It's now a commercial product with its own licensing and customer portal.

6 weeksfrom empty repository to production
1,500+commits · 750+ merged pull requests
~340klines of TypeScript & Kotlin
~7,400automated tests
17device & service integrations
5codebases: server, tablet, admin, phone, viewer
Slate wall panel: a thermostat control showing 21.5°C, heating, with mode buttons and room temperatures
Wall panel · thermostat, over HomeKit
Slate wall panel: weather detail with an extreme cold warning banner and hourly forecast
Wall panel · weather, with a live alert
Slate phone app: hot tub temperature, pumps, lights and water chemistry reference
Phone · hot tub
01 · Why

Eleven seconds to turn on a light.

Find the phone, unlock it, find the app, wait for it to connect, find the room, find the light. I wanted to stop unlocking my phone to operate my own house. A panel on the wall takes zero seconds. The first panel turned into six.

02 · Architecture

One brain. Thin clients. Nothing leaves the house.

A TypeScript server owns every integration, credential and piece of state. Native Kotlin tablets render what the server pushes over WebSockets and send actions back. Cameras, doorbell and intercom run over WebRTC entirely on the local network. Speech recognition and the "Hey Slate" wake word run on local models too, so the house keeps working when the internet doesn't.

03 · Decisions

Live television habits, applied to a house.

Two rules came straight from broadcast: degrade, never go blank, and never show a state you weren't actually told. A lock only shows "locked" when the lock says so. When a vendor's protocol refused commands, I measured rather than guessed, and moved the lock to Matter on Slate's own fabric. When a GPL library threatened commercial options, I wrote a clean-room replacement.

04 · Product

Read from three metres away.

Designed to be glanced at by someone standing across the room: tap does the obvious thing, hold for detail. Controls fade to a photo slideshow when nobody's near. The doorbell takes over nearby panels. Pricing is per house, not per device, and the license verifies offline, because a product that runs your house shouldn't depend on my servers.

05 · AI's role

I ran it like an engineering org with AI engineers.

Almost every commit is co-authored with Claude. I own the product, the architecture and the judgment calls. Agents work in parallel lanes in separate git worktrees, each declaring the files it owns. Every change is a pull request with CI. Plans and hand-off notes live in the repository, so any session can pick up where the last one stopped. Anything that needs a real device goes on a human-only checklist.

06 · What I learned

AI moves the bottleneck to judgment.

Code got cheap. Knowing what to build, how to verify it and when "it works" isn't true got more valuable. Three voice bugs hid behind passing tests because the tests didn't send what the tablet actually sends. My house is customer #1 on the same path real customers use, so a broken customer experience breaks my wall panels first.

Slate isn't a weekend landing page. After years in executive leadership, it's what happens when I sit down in front of an empty repository.

How I build it

05 How I build now

The tools changed. I kept building.

What fascinates me about AI isn't generating more code. It's shortening the distance between an idea, a prototype, evidence and a better decision.

At Ross

AI into the engineering workflow

I introduced AI-assisted development into engineering workflows, with explicit expectations for architecture, maintainability, security, review and quality. My teams also shipped AI into real products: video indexing and transcription in Streamline, and video analysis and metadata enrichment in Indigo using models built in-house.

On my own

Disciplined, and deliberately not

I use Claude Code every day. I've spent real time with both disciplined, spec-driven engineering and exploratory "vibe coding", because I wanted to learn where each one works, where it falls apart, and what engineering judgment still has to supply.

Since 2001

GamingExcellence, rebuilt

The gaming publication I started in 2001 still runs. This year I moved its decades-old Java stack onto containerized infrastructure with automatic TLS on an ARM cloud server. The page you're reading runs on the same box.

Apparently I automate things for fun, too.

My home automation started the way these projects usually do: one device, then another, then an API, then something that didn't quite work the way I wanted. Hue bridges, Lutron, cameras, a Matter lock, the thermostat, the pool, the hot tub, the garage and the irrigation all ended up behind one server.

Most of the source is private, for obvious reasons. Publishing the implementation of the locks, cameras and access systems in my own home would be a questionable demonstration of engineering judgment.

The activity is visible on GitHub, though. I keep at it because it gives me something increasingly rare in executive roles: a place to experiment, make architectural mistakes, rewrite things, connect weird systems together and build purely out of curiosity.

View my GitHub 

# slate, September 2026
$ git log --reverse --format=%as | head -1
2026-08-07
$ git rev-list --count main
1506
$ gh pr list --state merged -L 2000 | wc -l
757
$ git log --format=%b | grep -c "Co-Authored-By: Claude"
1485
$ git ls-files '*.test.ts' '*.test.tsx' | wc -l
457
$ git ls-files '*.kt' | xargs cat | wc -l
69692

06 How I lead

The job changed. My operating principles didn't.

Strong leaders, clear direction, decentralized decisions.

At executive scale my job wasn't to solve every engineering or product problem myself. It was to build directors and managers I trusted, make the north star unmistakable, set the right constraints, and give people room to do better work than they could with me in the middle of it.

Understand the system well enough to spot the decision that matters.

Technical leadership isn't being the smartest engineer in every conversation. I stayed close enough to the technology to ask useful questions, and to get properly involved when a situation needed executive depth.

Get close to the people doing the work.

From sitting with news producers for Inception to four NAB keynotes in front of more than a thousand customers and partners, the best product direction came from understanding how people actually work, not how we assumed they did.

Speed and quality aren't opposites.

When the system around a team is working, they move together. We took release cycles from 18 months to quarterly, and later delivered the best on-time record at Ross for five straight years alongside its lowest defect rates.

Operating at scale

Growth is less interesting if everything breaks.

The software my teams built often ran during live television. There's something clarifying about software whose failure can show up on air immediately. Reliability, quality, operational readiness and supportability couldn't be separate conversations.

I designed the foundation of Ross's SaaS operation: cloud infrastructure, deployment automation, monitoring, security, centralized logging, resilience and self-healing. I personally wrote deployment templates that became part of how the business ran.

99.9%contractual availability SLA
5 yearsbest on-time delivery at Ross, in a row
Lowestdefect and escalation rates in the company

07 The receipts

A few things I'm proud of.

Easier to click than to take my word for.

Standards Technology & Engineering Emmy

The 2016 award, presented in 2017, for MOS. I authored its web-based plug-ins and the proposal that became MOS 4.0.

The 2013 proposal →
Products More than a dozen industry awards

Earned across my portfolio, including 3× Best of Show for Media I/O and Project of the Year for Quorum at the Texas House.

The products →
Stage Four NAB keynotes in a row

Presenting product vision and strategy to more than 1,000 customers, partners and industry executives, including unveiling Indigo.

NAB Show 2026 →
Building Slate, from an empty repository

A production home control system and commercial product, built in six weeks with an AI-native workflow.

The story →
Education Cornell & Queen's Executive MBA

Dual degree, 2022, with Distinction from Cornell. Bachelor of Software Engineering, Carleton, High Distinction.

Resume · PDF →
Before all that Founded GamingExcellence in 2001

Ran the publication for thirteen years: editorial, contributors, budgets and global PR, alongside university and a full-time engineering job.

gamingexcellence.com →

09 Contact

Want to talk?

I'm based in Ottawa, Canada, and open to the right local or remote opportunity.

Email me LinkedIn GitHub Download resume PDF