Q1 2016 – Q4 2018

Responsibilities: HTML CSS/SASS JS/jQuery PHP/MySQL AWS

I inherited the task of maintenance, bugfixes, and new feature implementation during my time as an internal dev at the Simons Foundation. The bugs and tech debt that the initial vendor delivered with the project was a painful reminder of why waterfall development should be avoided at all costs.

Notable tasks: Getting a team new to Agile to adopt a SCRUM process running on 2-week sprints. Diving deeper in MySQL procedures to handle migrations of the alien information schema handed off to us. Migrating an Unfuddle ticket project to our Jira account in a jungle of chunked spreadsheets, field-remapping, and consolidation scripts to preserve ticket comment history. Migrating ACF field schema out of the PHP into which it had been distilled to prevent alteration by non-developer WP admins, back into the DB. Running a strategy-mapping workshop with the team to identify strategic solutions to obstacles (I am forever grateful to Rob Purdie from whom I learned this method). Writing a plugin that works with the arxiv.org api to provide a tool for helping content editors to sync arxiv’s publications authored by foundation scientists with our wordpress publications archive. Restructuring hundreds of daisy-chained SASS files into a more sane and manageable schema.