Em's Site

My Resume

Hi there,

It's hard to fit personality and passion on a single piece of paper, so I made this expanded version where I leave out the resume jargon and just talk casually about what i've done over the past decade of working. Enjoy!

Intro

I started as an intern web developer after graduating high school. Since then, I've taken on several different roles, from custom WordPress theme and plugin developer to Linux system admin, back to WordPress development, and finally to DevOps. I thrive where there's variety in my job, and I learn best when I get thrown into the deep end and figure out how to swim (but I don't hesitate to ask for a life ring if I get stuck). I'd rather be challenged every day than do the same thing repeatedly, and that's defined most of my professional career.

Professional Career

August 2021 - November 2023 - DevOps Engineer at Kinsta

As a DevOps Engineer, my role varied from day to day. During the 2+ years I was there, I contributed to several projects. I was most involved in the initial development and launch of Kinsta's new Application and Database Hosting (the fancy marketing name for managed Kubernetes hosting), developing helm charts, monitoring for abusive applications, and diagnosing build and deployment failures.

I was also responsible for developing and maintaining Kinsta's WordPress plugin that integrated cache and CDN clearing, whitelabeled sites, and enforced plugin bans. I re-wrote the entire plugin to improve speed and maintainability and changed the frontend styling to match Kinsta's style guide.

Besides those primary responsibilities, I also was involved in a myriad of other projects, including:

Also, thanks to my background in WordPress and web development, I was one of the few people in the company who could bridge the gap between developers and engineers, taking feature concepts and bug reports from engineers and creating implementation notes for developers and vice versa. I provided guidance and testing to both sides throughout the process.

March 2020 - May 2021 - WordPress Developer at LaFleur Marketing

LaFleur is a digital marketing agency specializing in the legal and financial markets. The 3 most important factors for them were Core Web Vitals scores, SEO friendliness, and accessibility. To achieve these goals, I created a custom modular WordPress theme that stripped out everything unnecessary and ensured no time was wasted fetching and rendering assets. Each website underwent an accessibility audit that ensured the website met or exceeded the WCAG 2 Level AA standards.

The custom theme also allowed for rapid customization, using the block editor and Advanced Custom Fields to allow customers to edit the site's content without accidentally breaking the layout.

The custom theme also integrated developer productivity enhancements, including Git-based workflows, local development environments, and ensuring that local, staging, and production environments were in sync and updated.

July 2016 - March 2020 - System Admin at TBX

In July 2016, I was asked to lead a project to modernize our website hosting capabilities while reducing costs. I researched all the options and started a 2-year implementation plan. Some of the highlights:

After that, I worked on developer tooling to increase the productivity and quality of development. I continued to maintain and improve the hosting capabilities, as well as dealing with abuse reports, launching new sites, and occasionally putting on my WordPress superhero cape if timelines got tight.

August 2013 - July 2016 - WordPress Developer at TBX

I got hired after my internship ended and became a full-stack WordPress developer. I learned a lot about WordPress internals and working for a creative agency. I don't have much else to say about this. I was super proud of my work, but all the websites I made are either replaced or 7+ years old, so I don't show them anymore. I did train several summer interns, one of whom now works at Google, so I must not have done that badly.

June 2013 - August 2013 - Intern Web Developer at TBX

The summer after I graduated high school (having never touched WordPress before and only knowing HTML and CSS from doing Codecademy when I should have been doing my online AP Calculus class), I coded the front end of a few custom WordPress sites. Us interns were called minions, and there was a picture on the wall of us as minion caricatures. Mine is holding an energy drink because there was always one on my desk. I got in trouble the first day for sitting in someone else's chair. In other words, typical internship stuff.

Education

I graduated in December 2019 from Grand Valley State with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Information Systems with an emphasis in Computer Science. If you're paying close attention, yes, it did take over 6 years to get my degree, but I decided to work full-time and go to school part-time in order to manage debt and gain experience in the field.

Hobbies

Outside of work, I have an eclectic group of hobbies. I have a guitar that I play and a keyboard that I don't (yet!) play. When it isn't snowing, I'm a big fan of the outdoors, hiking, and playing tennis, pickleball, and softball. I play chess online even though I'm not very good at it yet. I'm a licensed amateur radio operator and enjoy doing contests, digital modes, and POTA when I have time. And, of course, being a developer, I have a lot of half-finished side projects.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading this all the way through (unless you skipped to the ending)! Hopefully, this helps you better understand my strengths and knowledge than the resume I submit online.