Martin Laws — Resumé
hey@mlaws.camlaws.ca647.667.7505Torontomartinlaws on Github and LinkedInI’m a Fractional CTO and AI design engineer — a hacker at heart with great taste.Twelve years shipping software as a developer, designer, and engineering leader, nearly five of them at Shopify. I help design-minded founders and studios name the real problem, make the hard technical calls, and ship production software with frontier AI tooling — not vibe-coded prototypes.I get paid for taste, not tonnage: clarity before code, complexity brought down to earth, and a team that has a great time building something worth putting my name behind.
Practice
Low Tide Consulting 2019–present
Founder · Fractional CTO & AI Design Engineer
My consulting practice since 2019, and — since leaving Shopify in early 2025 — my full-time focus. I work as a Fractional CTO and AI design engineer for design-minded founders and studios: naming the real problem before writing a line of code, making the hard technical calls, and shipping production software with frontier AI tooling. I’m in a deepening partnership with Gev Design, where “Paired Builds” mean one design conversation, one codebase, and no drift between what’s approved and what ships. Earlier, the practice reimagined the technology behind The Globe and Mail’s subscription experience and delivered rapid prototyping for a range of startups.
Inflection Summit ↗ 2026
Fractional CTO, in partnership with Gev Design.
Tightrope ↗ 2026
Fractional CTO, in partnership with Gev Design.
Capston ↗ 2026
A Paired Build with Gev Design — I built the website.
From Here ↗ 2025
Fractional CTO for a Canadian local marketplace.
The Depanneur ↗ 2025
Fractional CTO — custom Shopify storefront and app for an innovative restaurant space.
Confidential fintech 2025–present
Interim CTO, now technical advisor.
Experience
Shopify 2020–2025
Senior UX Developer → Engineering Manager → Staff Developer
Nearly five years across three roles. I joined as a Senior UX Developer, moved into Engineering Management for the App Developer Experience team — growing it from 3 to 12 and owning the interfaces, APIs, and tooling developers use to build apps on Shopify — then stepped back into building as a Staff Developer leading front-end and UX engineering for Custom Data (metafields and metaobjects), Images, Video, and 3D.
Ample Organics 2017–2019
Front End Development Lead
The startup-dream chapter. I joined around employee 30 and led the front-end team’s 4x growth as the company scaled past 110 people and >85% of the Canadian seed-to-sale cannabis compliance market. Shaped technical strategy, modernized the stack, and owned all user-facing apps and open-source projects.
Index Exchange 2016–2017
UX Development Lead
The only developer on a four-person design team at the world’s #3 programmatic ad exchange, interfacing with 200+ engineers. I shipped rapid prototypes and high-craft user experiences, and ran front-end workshops across multiple cities.
Lighthouse Labs 2016–2020
Web Development Instructor
Lectured and co-authored curriculum — modern JavaScript, React, Vue.js, and CSS best practices — taught in eight cities to over 2,000 students.
Canadian Accredited Independent Schools 2014–2015
Multimedia Developer
Where it started: websites, email campaigns, video, and design for 26 boarding schools across Canada.
Public work
My current favourite talk: getting from vibe-coded prototypes to AI systems you can actually ship and trust in production.
FITC Web Unleashed ↗ 2020–2025
A regular speaker across Canada and the US, including Design Thinking for Developers and moderating the Design <> Development panel.
Led front-end development on Shopify’s flagship product taxonomy, custom category metafields, and the AI functionality embedded across both.
