NJI Media

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

Role: Contributing Developer

Collaboration: Development, Design, Marketing, Client Leadership, Project / account management

Key contributions:

  • Built and maintained custom WordPress themes and plugins across a portfolio of client properties, translating design/UX specs into production templates, components, and editor workflows (often ACF-driven or hybrid classic/block setups depending on the site).
  • Owned the full implementation path: PHP templating and data modeling, HTML/CSS/SCSS, JavaScript enhancements, performance-conscious enqueue patterns, and pragmatic MySQL/WordPress query work when listings and archives needed custom logic.
  • Partnered daily with design, UX, project management, and client stakeholders through scoping, QA, launch windows, and post-launch iterations—including turning feedback into maintainable updates rather than one-off hacks.
  • Operated in Git-based workflows with code review discipline, coordinated releases across environments, and supported ongoing maintenance: bug fixing, dependency/plugin updates (when appropriate), and incremental improvements as brands evolved.

Full-Stack WordPress Developer at a fast-paced digital agency (Washington, DC), building custom WordPress themes and plugins in a Pantheon-heavy environment for high-traffic public sites. Work spanned data integrations, release and hosting operations, performance, accessibility, analytics, and stakeholder-facing enablement (documentation and training). Specific tools and outcomes are in the bullets below.

  • Rebuilt legislative voting data integration after a sunset legacy congressional API (ProPublica): migrated ingestion to api.congress.gov, aggregated House and Senate voting-related records from multiple sources, and persisted merged datasets in WordPress to respect API usage limits and support DataTables plus an interactive U.S. map with state-level tooltips for the American Energy Scorecard. Public work: americanenergyalliance.org/american-energy-scorecard (site may evolve post-handoff).
  • Developed and maintained custom WordPress themes and theme-level PHP; extended into plugins when appropriate, including cron, REST, and WP-CLI — including custom post types and admin tooling to support analytics traffic diagnostics and anomaly investigation.
  • Served as the team’s primary Pantheon WebOps resource (including Terminus, multidev, and deployment hooks) after pursuing WebOps certification proactively; helped standardize Git-based release practices and became the primary owner of recurring maintenance workflows across 50+ client WordPress sites as responsibility consolidated.
  • Added Ghost Inspector regression coverage for deployments to catch issues before production and support stable releases.
  • Performed ongoing environment and database operations across Pantheon environments (sync, search-replace, cloning) as part of day-to-day delivery; used Lando-aligned local workflows for reproducible builds and database access during troubleshooting and migrations.
  • Delivered multisite work spanning two sites, including a migration with substantial database planning and execution.
  • Improved performance and stability through Redis, Pantheon Advanced Page Cache where applicable, asset optimization, and database/query tuning for high-traffic properties.
  • Led Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics implementations and requirements through deployment and reporting and stakeholder training; partnered with marketing on HubSpot reporting alignment where needed; authored internal documentation and runbooks; facilitated training for clients and internal teams on WordPress publishing and best practices.
  • Built a video carousel using Swiper and GSAP, with a responsive scale treatment (from ~90% viewport width to a compact carousel layout) and Vimeo Player API integration (player.js) for custom playback controls.