Ryan is available for hire
Hire RyanRyan Foster
Verified Expert in Engineering
Full-stack Developer
Mae Sot Tak, Thailand
Toptal member since March 5, 2018
Bio
Ryan helps businesses grow their revenue by strategically improving the effectiveness of their websites and email marketing and advertising campaigns. He can help you identify high-leverage opportunities for growth, create and optimize advertising campaigns, create and optimize landing pages and websites, set up and optimize automated email marketing sequences, create online courses, and fulfill all your copywriting needs.
Portfolio
Alan Bernau Jr
Writing & Editing, Technical Writing, Copywriting, Email Marketing...
Living Church of God
Digital Marketing Strategy, Landing Page Optimization...
Pynora
Strategic Planning
Experience
- Writing & Editing - 19 years
- Landing Page Optimization - 4 years
- Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) - 4 years
- Marketing Strategy - 4 years
- Copywriting - 4 years
- Digital Marketing Strategy - 3 years
- Email Marketing Automation - 3 years
- Email Marketing - 3 years
Availability
Part-time
Preferred Environment
Email, Websites, Landing Pages, Videos
The most amazing...
...Facebook ad campaign I ran built a list of over 165,000 email subscribers at a cost of approximately $0.10 per subscriber.
Work Experience
Growth Engineer
2022 - 2024
Alan Bernau Jr
- Developed ideas for A/B tests that significantly helped improve conversion rates and increase revenue.
- Created lead magnets and email sequences that helped increase sales.
- Updated and optimized hundreds of pages on the company website.
Technologies: Writing & Editing, Technical Writing, Copywriting, Email Marketing, Email Marketing Automation, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Web Application Developer for Marketing Department
2019 - 2021
Living Church of God
- Helped the head of the marketing department refine the marketing strategy for the worldwide organization and identify, prioritize, and implement high-leverage marketing and optimization projects.
- Rebuilt and optimized the organization's key order funnel.
- Optimized the flow and conversion rate for the organization's most important contact form.
- Used an agile development process to build a custom online learning platform.
Technologies: Digital Marketing Strategy, Landing Page Optimization, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), JavaScript
Chief Technology Officer
2018 - 2019
Pynora
- Identified requirements for a minimum viable product and planned the application architecture.
- Provided advice on the technologies and tools that would best fit the project's requirements.
- Helped manage and perform code reviews for an off-shore development team.
Technologies: Strategic Planning
Senior Web Application Developer
2012 - 2017
Oregon Department of Administrative Services
- Designed and built a single sign-on identity and access management system for 40,000 employees in more than 80 separate organizations based on IdentityServer4, OpenID Connect, and a custom group management application. This system resolved numerous security issues, reduced development time for new applications, improved the experience of users, and saved up to three million dollars in costs per year compared to alternative solutions.
- Worked with product owners to gather requirements for rewriting a sizable back-office WebForms application. Used a lightweight approach that resulted in a collection of system context diagrams and user stories. Used an agile process to refine requirements while building a minimum viable product and then added features to this base product based on the customer's priorities. Led a small development team to implement the design using microservices, ASP.NET Core MVC, Web API, and continuous integration.
- Developed a mobile-first, responsive web interface for an online time entry and approval application used by more than 20,000 employees and helped integrate it with the legacy mainframe payroll system via web services.
- Performed life cycle and security analysis for a portfolio of over 30 applications built with more than half a dozen technology stacks. Identified moderate to critical security and sustainability risks and helped create documents and visuals used by the CIO to communicate the nature and scope of the identified risks to upper management.
- Managed several Windows and Linux web and database servers.
- Used Azure services for the rapid deployment of a proof-of-concept business intelligence portal.
- Provided technical leadership for all other developers and training and oversight for the junior developers.
- Initiated and succeeded in an effort to reunify the web development team and reconcile them with management after a rift between management and staff destroyed morale.
Technologies: JavaScript
Web Designer | Developer | Technology Consultant
2008 - 2013
Freelance Work
- Converted Photoshop designs into pixel-perfect responsive layouts for content management systems.
- Designed and created websites and web applications for clients.
- Gave advice to companies, nonprofit organizations, and individuals on the selection, design, and implementation of web-based application solutions.
- Developed tools to parse Wiktionary and compute the probability of equivalent meanings in order to create wordnets for 83 languages. Coauthored a Natural Language Processing research paper describing the methodology and results of the project and released the wordnets under an open source license. This project helped kickstart the further development of wordnets in several new languages and encouraged the release of new and existing wordnets under open source licenses.
Technologies: PHP
Application Specialist
2008 - 2012
Oregon State Data Center
- Provided advice to management, supervisors, and coworkers in the planning of new features to be implemented in the data center's customer portal, ticket tracking, and asset management systems.
- Designed and built modules, forms, and workflows for web-based applications used by staff and customers.
- Designed, built, and released open-source plugins required for the data center’s asset management system.
Technologies: PHP
Consultant
2010 - 2010
American Eagle Outfitters
- Integrated an IT asset discovery system with a configuration management system used to track tens of thousands of devices.
Technologies: PHP
Teacher
2003 - 2008
Volunteer Teacher | Substitute Teacher
- Taught English, leadership, public speaking, and many other subjects.
- Supervised volunteer teachers.
- Developed curriculum.
Experience
Access and Identity Management Solution
Designed and built a single sign-on identity and access management system with .NET Core, IdentityServer4, and OpenID Connect.
ePayroll
Developed a mobile-first, responsive web interface for an online time entry and approval application in .NET MVC and helped integrate it with the legacy mainframe payroll system via web services. Later upgraded the system to .NET Core.
Back-office Web Application
Rewrote a sizable back-office WebForms application using microservices, ASP.NET Core MVC, Web API, and continuous integration.
Hash Iteration Calculator
https://github.com/openidauthority/HashIterationCalculatorCreated a simple open-source tool to help people tune the ASP.NET identity settings for their hardware.
Getapassphrase.com
https://getapassphrase.com/Created a passphrase generator in JavaScript that creates grammatically correct nonsense phrases that are millions of times stronger than normal passwords.
Protect Your Online Identity with Great Passwords
Created a training course on password security to replace common myths with solid advice.
Language-learning Website
Designed and created a beta version of a language-learning website with PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and MySQL. Includes language auto-detect feature and various tools for learning vocabulary.
Pixel-perfect Layouts
Converted Photoshop designs to pixel-perfect HTML and CSS layout for Vertical Thought Magazine, Britten Motorcycle Company, Surreal Hair and Beauty, and many others.
CMS-backed Websites
Created CMS-backed websites with MODX, HTML, and CSS for Mahonia Vineyard, Sound Bytes Reading, AER Fitness, and many others.
WordNet Research Paper
http://aclweb.org/anthology/P13-1133Co-authored a paper on natural language processing.
Education
2002 - 2003
Master of Arts Degree in Teaching
Willamette University - Salem, OR, USA
1997 - 2002
Bachelor of Science Degree in History
Oregon State University - Corvallis, OR, USA
Skills
Languages
PHP, JavaScript
Paradigms
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Platforms
WordPress
Other
Technical Writing, Content Management Systems (CMS), Landing Page Optimization, Copywriting, Email Marketing, Writing & Editing, English, Digital Marketing Strategy, Strategic Planning, Marketing Strategy, Landing Pages, SSG, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Email Marketing Automation, Conversion Rate, Email, Websites, Videos
Collaboration That Works
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
1
Share your needs
Discuss your requirements and refine your scope in a call with a Toptal domain expert.
2
Choose your talent
Get a short list of expertly matched talent within 24 hours to review, interview, and choose from.
3
Start your risk-free talent trial
Work with your chosen talent on a trial basis for up to two weeks. Pay only if you decide to hire them.
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring