Resume

You can view my interactive resume on LinkedIn.

Overview

I am a WordPress engineer. Not a typical WordPress engineer, but more of a Super Web Architect hiding in the world of WordPress.

As a WordPress enthusiast, I actively contribute to WordPress core and collaborate on tools used by the WordPress community. I also serve as the maintainer for several WordPress libraries and plugins. I find Gutenberg blocks rudimentary, so I dig deeper and push block boundaries beyond what the official documentation and community suggest. I maintain the unofficial TypeScript definition library for the @wordpress Gutenberg packages. Yes, I have written hundreds of WordPress plugins and themes.

To keep my skills sharp, I contribute to numerous open-source projects and maintain relationships with various clients. One look at my GitHub profile and you can see I know what I’m talking about. This doesn’t include all the proprietary things I work on at my day job. I have an unquenchable thirst to discover and expand my skills. I’m comfortable diving into existing projects and enjoy refactoring code.

I have college degrees in both Network Administration and Computer Technician, so I know how things work. I also have a master’s‑level equivalent of experience in computer science.

All of my code is written under extremely strict coding rules and requirements. I use tools like PHPStan, PHPCS, ESLint, and Stylelint to automatically validate code as I go. I’ve published and maintain customized configurations and libraries for each tool. I’m not a fan of labels, but you could say I use Test Driven Development with unit tests in both PHPUnit and Jest to not only verify my code but to assist with writing it.

I am deeply experienced with Node.js. I use Webpack to build my TypeScript. I also dabble in Vite. React predominantly powers my virtual DOM, though I do work a bit with Svelte. I can do headless sites, though I have found progressively decoupled sites to be more performant at scale.

For project delivery and code validation, I embrace a DevOps-style Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) flow, with GitHub Actions as my preferred automation tool. Really, I am so used to using CI/CD I probably couldn’t survive without it. You can see a few of my workflows if you’re curious.

I work exclusively with enterprise-level sites and applications, so I am obsessed with performance and scalability. I will go deep on MySQL, Elasticsearch, Memcached, OPcache, and PHP to optimize until a harmonious balance exists across the application. New Relic is a handy tool, but so is Xdebug profiling or MySQL EXPLAIN.

I’ve worked with a lot of server hosting companies. A few that I work with all the time are DigitalOcean, WP Engine, WordPress VIP, and Leaseweb. WP Engine remains my top choice. My local development environment is entirely custom, uses less battery, and outperforms anything I have seen.

I’m well versed in both Agile and Waterfall project methodologies, having worked extensively with JIRA and Asana. I personally like Asana because of the slick subtasks, but working with a large team typically requires the sprint capabilities of JIRA.

I embrace AI tools in my workflow. I am not a prompt engineer. I use AI to autocomplete simple code or pull information from documentation. I’m confident that one day AI will be smart enough to accept prompts and write code to my standards, but for now I am more efficient using PhpStorm IntelliSense and AI to reduce keystrokes as I code. GitHub Copilot and JetBrains AI Assistant remain my top choices for AI.

Lastly, I’ve mastered remote work over the years and find my home office to be the most productive setting.

Experience