ShopForward develops and utilizes proprietary software to automate Google Ads, particularly focusing on Google Shopping ads.

When I joined in November 2020, ShopForward was a two-person startup that had just moved out of a home office. The existing application, developed by one of the founders, was written in  an undisclosed framework. However, the framework's features were scarcely utilized, and development was conducted directly on the production environment via FTP.

Key improvements implemented:

1. Established a comprehensive development environment:

   • Set up GitLab with automated deployments to staging and production environments.
   • Created a staging environment for testing purposes.
   • Developed a local virtualized environment for development.

2. Enhanced product processing capabilities:

   • Addressed the challenge of processing over 50 million products daily, with a monthly growth of 5 million products.
   • Conducted research and determined which was a suitable solution for scaling and efficient data handling.
   • Set up a staging environment for rapid search.
   • Deployed rapid search environment in the cloud via Google Cloud Platform.
   • Developed custom repositories and services for the framework integration.
   • Created a migration procedure to gradually transfer products from "regular database" to rapid search database.

3. Expanded the development team:

   • Within three months, onboarded three junior developers, including one of the founders.
   • Advised on recruiting suitable front-end and back-end PHP developers.
   • Mentored the new developers on best practices in using the framework and applying design patterns.

These initiatives significantly improved the application's scalability, maintainability, and development workflow during my tenure of over 1.5 years at ShopForward.