Josh McAdams

Engineer / teacher / tinkerer

I build systems.
I teach what I learn.

I’m Josh, a Staff Engineer at IDEXX. I spent 17+ years at Google building reliable software at scale. These days I’m still doing that—and exploring what changes when AI joins the development team.

See what’s on the bench
FIELD NOTES · 36.8509° S
NOW Staff Engineer IDEXX · Auckland
THEN 17+ years Google · systems at scale
AFTER HOURS AI + small tools Experiments in better building
Distributed systems✦ Developer tools✦ AI-assisted coding✦ Teaching✦ Reliability✦ Curiosity✦

01 / A short version

Still curious after all these years.

I like hard, useful problems: distributed systems, developer experience, and the human systems around the software.

My career has moved through data warehousing, ads, cloud, education, reliability, and now veterinary diagnostics. The common thread is making complicated things understandable—then making them work.

Teaching is part of that practice. I created and taught Google’s Applied Machine Learning Intensive and have taught computer science and software development at universities across the US.

17+
years at Google
400+
hours of applied ML curriculum
∞
things left to learn
NZ
currently based in Auckland

02 / On the bench

Small tools. Useful ideas.

A few public experiments from the after-hours workbench.

001

Agent standards · Shell

agent-skills

Practical standards and reusable skills for agents working with REST APIs.

 002

Developer utility · Go

whence

A development port cleaner for the inevitable “what is using that port?” moment.

 003

Video toolkit · TypeScript

framewise

A minimal frame-as-state video toolkit. Because video is easier one frame at a time.

 004

Configuration tool · TypeScript

rrule

A friendlier builder for the famously unfriendly recurrence rule format.

A question from the workbench

How small can a useful developer tool be?

03 / The throughline

Build it. Run it. Explain it.

  1. Now

    IDEXX

    Staff engineering, distributed messaging, and better development practices.

  2. 2008—25

    Google

    Software engineering and SRE across Ads, Cloud, and Education.

  3. Always

    The classroom

    Turning practical experience into courses, workshops, and shared understanding.

04 / Elsewhere

The internet is a big place.
Here are two useful doors.

Code & experiments GitHub The professional timeline LinkedIn