Highlights
- Providing technical leadership and mentorship for remote teams of software engineers
- Architecting software systems that balance the “-ilities” (scalability, maintainability, accessibility, security, et al.)
- Maintaining software quality through automated testing and CI/CD processes
- Developing useful abstractions and APIs for communication between systems
- Contributing to open source software and communities
Professional Experience
Senior Backend Engineer
Modern Tribe, 2010-Present
- Led teams on multi-million dollar projects developing solutions for enterprise and higher-ed clients
- Trained and mentored backend engineers as the company grew from a dozen employees to over a hundred
- Developed and maintained Square One, Modern Tribe’s framework for building highly scalable, maintainable WordPress-powered websites for enterprise clients
- Architected the BigCommerce for WordPress plugin, connecting a scalable, headless e-commerce platform to the WordPress ecosystem
- Established a culture of automated testing and implemented GitHub Action workflows to ensure that tests are running and passing
- Standardized local development environments using flexible Docker container configurations
- Coordinated teams of developers across four companies to build a seamless user experience across WordPress, Salesforce, and SAP applications
- Architected a decentralized content syndication system for a network of 345 radio stations. The system was reusable for a network of 100+ furniture dealers and a network of 300+ restaurants.
- Implemented faceted search experiences using Elasticsearch
- Created and scaled a high-traffic intranet portal for a media conglomerate with over 200,000 employees
- Connected online commerce platforms to manufacturing ERP systems
- Built platforms to deliver multilingual content to users in over 30 languages
- Standardized deployment pipelines to make production releases to a variety of hosts simple and consistent
- Designed APIs to connect distributed systems, simplify complex tasks, and streamline development workflows
Tools: PHP, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, MySQL, WordPress, Elasticsearch, Docker, nginx
Developer, Owner
Flightless, 2007-Present
- Developed WordPress websites and plugins for a variety of clients
- Created the Action Scheduler library to enable WooCommerce stores to scale subscriptions beyond the limits of WordPress’s cron system, supporting millions of subscription renewals per month
Tools: PHP, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, MySQL, WordPress, Solr, Drupal
Metadata and Digital Initiatives Developer
Ball State University Libraries, 2005-2009
- Automated the digitization, OCR, and publishing workflow of the new Digital Media Repository
- Supervised a team of staff and students digitizing library archives and cultural assets
Tools: Python, Perl, OmniPage, Photoshop, OCRopus, Tesseract, JavaScript, CONTENTdm, MediaWiki, OCLC Macro Language
Graduate Assistant
Indiana University Digital Library Program, 2004-2005
- Automated OCR data cleanup to support the creation of the Film Literature Index Online, saving hundreds of hours of manual corrections
- Developed XSLT transformations to support the Program’s projects to digitize and make accessible the library’s print archives
- Supported faculty and student research using electronic text resources
Tools: Perl, JavaScript, Oracle DBMS, XSLT
Community
- Contributor to WordPress core, including a major refactor of the action and filter system that powers the plugin API
- Volunteer and speaker at community-run conferences and users’ groups
- Founding Editor and Technical Administrator, Code4Lib Journal, 2007-2011
Presentations
- A Survey of WordPress PHP APIs, WordCamp Orlando, 2019-08-24, and WordCamp Jacksonville, 2019-06-29
- Background Processing and Queues (workshop), WordCamp Orlando, 2019-08-23
- Raising kids with code, WordCamp US, 2017-12-02
- Roles, Caps, and Meta Caps: Harnessing the WordPress Capabilities API, WordCamp Ann Arbor, 2017-10-17
- A PHP Developer’s Adventures in React : Building Plugin Admin Interfaces, WordCamp Miami, 2017-03-26
- Leveraging Your Git Workflow to Improve Quality and Communication, WordCamp Jacksonville, 2016-04-17
- Implements Hello_Dolly, WordCamp Orlando, 2016-11-12
- Defense against the Dark Arts: Writing Secure WordPress Plugins and Themes, WordCamp Orlando, 2015-11-14
- Build Your Dev Environment with Docker, WordCamp Miami, 2015-05-31
- Technical Debt Snowball, WordCamp Orlando, 2014-12-06
- Writing Testable WordPress Plugins, WordSesh 2, 2013-12-07; WordCamp Miami, 2014-05-10
- An Introduction to WordPress, JaxPHP/JaxWeb Meetup Group, Jacksonville, Fla., 2013-11-05
- Batch OCR using Open Source Tools, Code4Lib 2010, Asheville, N.C., 2010-02-25
- Building an Online Open Access Journal with WordPress, Ohio Valley Group of Technical Services Librarians 2009 Conference, Indianapolis, Ind., 2009-05-07
- Preparing MARC data for CONTENTdm withPython and pymarc, Midwest CONTENTdm Users Group 4rd Annual Meeting, West Lafayette, Ind., 2009-03-19
Formal Education
Master of Library Science, Indiana University, May 2005
Bachelor of Music, Ball State University, May 2003
Contact Information
- [email protected]
- Phone
- (765) 274-0342