About Me

Senior software engineer in Sydney — platforms, Vue/Nuxt, open source, and Goodger.dev.

Hi, I'm Sam Goodger — a senior software engineer based in Sydney. For the last eight years I've focused on front-end platforms, developer experience, and systems that have to stay reliable under real load.Most of that time was at GROW Inc, where I grew from front-end engineer to engineering team lead and back to a senior IC. I worked on the administration platform used by Australian superannuation funds, with a strong emphasis on authorisation, performance, and paved paths for other teams.In 2026 I started Goodger.dev — a consultancy helping small businesses with modern sites, audits, and Cloudflare-backed hosting. Outside client work I maintain open-source projects in the Minecraft ecosystem (notably the LuckPerms web editor) and build tools under the Turbotailz / tailz.dev umbrella.By night I DJ as GOODGEAR — house, trance, and pop — which keeps the creative side of my brain awake.I'm currently open to senior or staff engineering roles where platform thinking, Vue/Nuxt depth, and shipping ownership matter.

Experience

Goodger.dev

Sydney, NSW

Founder · 2026 – Present

Built and launched the consultancy site and productised website audit workflow (/check).
Delivered client rebuilds and Shopify performance work for local businesses.

GROW Inc

Sydney, NSW (remote)

Senior Software Engineer · Apr 2024 – Mar 2026
Engineering Team Lead · Jan 2023 – Apr 2024
Senior Software Engineer · Jan 2022 – Jan 2023
Front-end Engineer · Jan 2020 – Jan 2022

Reduced authorisation payloads by ~90%, improving latency by ~50% and generating ~$150k/yr AWS savings.
Built a PR branch preview system that cut manual QA setup and saved 10+ hours of DevOps toil per week.
Created a JSON Schema validation framework adopted by 100+ developers across the organisation.
Led the enterprise Vue 2 → Vue 3 migration for a large SPA, clearing security debt.
Eliminated duplicate SQS processing via PostgreSQL transaction locking; cut test runtime by 50% with automated migration testing.

DCODE Group

Melbourne

Software Developer · May 2019 – Dec 2019

Built bespoke Laravel + Vue client apps — e-commerce, POS, and quoting systems.
Mentored juniors and participated in code reviews.

Ocular

Sydney, NSW

Full Stack Developer · May 2017 – Apr 2019

Full-stack client websites (Laravel, TYPO3, Vue); managed deployments and client training.

Department of Internal Affairs (NZ)

New Zealand

Various roles · May 2012 – Feb 2016

Customer support, logistics, and team leadership in a high-volume government environment.

Education

Diploma in Web Development, Computer Programming

Yoobee College of Creative Innovation · 2016

Sam Goodger