Meet the DevAllies - Marie Mc Guinness, Software Engineer

The Collaborator · Raise the bar · <6 months at DevAlly

Who are you, and what are you up to at DevAlly?

I'm Marie Mc Guinness, a Software Engineer at DevAlly, and a proud Roscommon native. I came to tech from architecture. After a decade designing buildings and public spaces, I retrained as a software engineer to get hands-on with building the products that shape how people experience the world. Being part of an early-stage startup means I get to help build our accessibility platform from the ground up and contribute to making digital experiences work for all users.

“If it doesn't work for everyone, it doesn't work. So I’m building for everyone at DevAlly.”

What does a typical day look like for you at DevAlly?

Having recently joined, my days involve getting hands-on with TypeScript and Next.js, understanding how our testing setup works across Jest and Playwright, and picking up the patterns the team have established across the codebase. The standups help! I get to see what's being shipped and ask questions of people who've been building with these tools far longer than I have.

What problem does DevAlly solve — in your own words?

It highlights the challenges that need to be addressed to make products more accessible, and gives developers one place to organise everything. Like tracking issues, identifying new ones, and seeing progress.

What's the thing you're most proud of building here?

Universal design is at the heart of what DevAlly does, if you design for as much inclusivity as possible, it makes the design better for everyone. I’m proud to be helping to contribute to this and to learn how to build better products myself in the process.

Getting familiar with how we monitor and test — Playwright for end-to-end, Sentry for what breaks in production, PostHog for how people actually use what we build — has changed how I think about what 'done' means. It's not shipped. It's working, for real users, in the real world.

Hot take: what's the future of developer tooling?

I use Claude Code every day. It speeds things up considerably. But the interesting question isn't whether AI tools are useful, it's where your judgement ends and the tool's begins. Knowing the difference between a suggestion you'd have made yourself and one you're just accepting because it looks right - that's the skill.

“I think about that a lot as someone still learning the codebase.”

Fun fact — something that surprises people about you.

I'm a passionate baker. I love cooking, and a few years ago I made my friend's wedding cake. From scratch.

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