Taryn Ewens

I'm passionate about diversity, equality and inclusion in the tech industry. Due to this, my two favourite things are:

1. Mentoring junior devs who don't fit the standard software engineer stereotype
2. Building accessible user interfaces

I love to improve user experiences for all customers, but really appreciate working within highly collaborative teams who value openness and empathy.

In my experience, fostering an environment where individuals feel empowered to share their ideas freely not only enhances creativity but also leads to innovative solutions. I firmly believe that diversity in perspectives drives better outcomes, and I am committed to advocating for inclusive practices that celebrate differences and promote equity.

If you believe my background and expertise could benefit your team, I'm always open to new opportunities. Feel free to reach out via email or LinkedIn - I'd welcome the chance to speak with you!

Things I’ve worked on

Atlassian

• Part of the founding "Editor AI" team that delivered the frontend for the Atlassian Cloud Editors Generative AI features. We went from concept to delivering general availability in less than a year, with private and public beta releases along the way.
• Organised team events which resulted in a team wellness survey showing that both individual wellbeing and team connectedness both increased to 100% (a 49% increase since the survey prior).
• In a project team of two, solved a key pain point by addressing a 15 year old customer request regarding the flexibility to restart the numbering in an ordered list at a different number. This resulted in roughly 1.6m 'restart lists' inserted per month and an estimate of 250k monthly active users in both Jira & Confluence.
• Contributed to a performance project which cut down time to interactive by 35%
• Coordinated the end-to-end releases of packages from platform into products, juggling up to 6 releases at a time at various stages from development to adoption. At the same time contributed to improvements in the release process & tooling.
• Contributed to a performance project which cut down time to interactive by 35%
• Supported feature contributions from external teams to the editor codebase
• Feature led a team of engineers to build and release the new undo/redo buttons in the Confluence cloud editor (along with predictability improvements for undo/redo behaviours)!
• End to end tests for editor functionality to allow manual testing time to be spent on more complex scenarios
• Improvements to lists in the cloud editor

Mentoring at Atlassian

• Guided junior engineers in a women's LEAP program aimed at advancing their careers, resulting in multiple promotions shortly after completion.
• Provided extensive unassigned mentoring to junior engineers, directly contributing to the promotion of at least 2 individuals, with several more on track for advancement. Implemented weekly growth sessions with a cohort of 4 juniors, facilitating documentation of their progress and identifying areas for improvement. Collaborated with mentees on crafting promotion applications, ensuring their readiness for career progression.
• Established and currently oversee a women in editor web group, offering a supportive platform for female engineers to seek guidance, share experiences, and foster a sense of community. This initiative aims to promote inclusivity and empowerment within the tech industry.

Finder

• Design Ops: as a team we refreshed the navigation, page templates, side bar and more, giving the whole site a fresh new look and improved user experience. The page templates we created and rolled out across the site reduced bounce rate by ~25%.
• Gutenberg CMS: building ‘blocks’ (components) for the new WordPress editor, using a hybrid renderer that renders Wordpress content in a Next.JS front-end.
• Engineering diversity working group.
• Finder Tech Blog.
• Web accessibility learning breaks.
• Helped propose and implement web accessibility standards.