Tomas Stark
Verified Expert in Engineering
WordPress Plugins Developer
Bratislava, Bratislava Region, Slovakia
Toptal member since September 28, 2016
Tomas has several years of experience developing on the WordPress platform which he has been working with since version 2.0. He gained valuable experience working for clients including leading real estate agencies in the Midwest US, Exxon Mobil, and Volkswagen UK. He's also led a team of developers while working for a London-based digital agency and he always keeps up to the highest coding standards and technologies.
Portfolio
Experience
- WordPress Plugins - 11 years
- WordPress - 11 years
- MySQL - 9 years
- PHP - 9 years
- JavaScript - 7 years
- WordPress Multisite - 7 years
- WooCommerce - 5 years
- React - 4 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Chrome Developer Tools, ITerm, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), MacOS, Docker
The most amazing...
...plugin I've coded was the management of property listings, available spaces in leased office properties, property flyers, and HTML emails within WordPress.
Work Experience
WordPress Engineer
Toptal
- Worked with various clients from multiple industries. Planned, delivered, and managed custom solutions powered by WordPress.
- Improved project management, development processes, and introduced industry-standard CI and CD tooling for reliable delivery to sites with 3k+ daily visitors.
- Used a diverse set of technologies to accomplish clients' goals. Leveraged modern tools such as AWS Lambda and DynamoDB for automating tasks so that a client can focus on what's most important for them – the business side of things.
- Oversaw performance audits and improvements related to usability and accessibility of websites.
- Kept code quality high and in compliance with the latest guidelines such as WordPress coding standards.
- Optimized database queries and leveraged caching and best practices such as above-the-fold code for the maximum site performance score.
Principal WordPress Engineer
The Theme Foundry
- Was a part of the small team working on popular WordPress products – Make (WP theme) and Happyforms (WP contact form plugin).
- Worked in delivery cycles of three-six weeks. Oversaw the completion of deliverables and owned epics every release cycle.
- Was responsible for planning, developing, testing, and releasing products. Collaborated closely with the product owner on technical shaping of features.
- Maintained and supported products of more than 100,000 customers combined.
- Guided fellow team members when stuck and brainstormed solutions either asynchronously or synchronously depending on the complexity of the issue.
- Followed the newest trends and tools in the industry to keep products up to date and in line with the current guidelines and philosophy of the WordPress community.
- Led initiatives and projects to improve the product in general, help reshape our workflow to be more efficient, and automating the way products were released and maintained.
Senior Web Developer
Tribal DDB London
- Oversaw and was responsible for the local front-end development team in Slovakia; led daily standups, reporting directly to the product manager.
- Developed new functionality and UI components for Volkswagen UK and Exxon Mobil using JavaScript, Backbone.js. Tested the JavaScript code in Jasmine and Mocha.
- Reviewed code of senior front-end engineers. Deployed using Jenkins build scripts.
- Trained new team members to keep up with the momentum of the team and making sure they are getting familiar with the Agile workflow.
- Participated in the Volkswagen UK redesign project where I held a front-end architect role.
- Managed a team of five senior developers on a daily basis.
Developer
Freelance Work
- Worked for various clients including lead real estate agencies in the Midwest US.
- Developed complex solutions on both the back-end and front-end side, mostly WordPress.
- Custom-developed for WordPress (themes, plugins) for years. Followed the newest WordPress standards. Worked with WordPress since version 2.0.
- Gained and used my extended knowledge of back-end technologies PHP, SQL, and Node.js.
- Wrote clean and efficient JavaScript, React, and jQuery code.
- Used Chrome DevTools for debugging JavaScript, CSS, and measuring site speed.
Web Developer
Perform GROUP
- Participated in the development of a new site builder for Perform GROUP, a UK-based digital media company.
- Worked closely with the back-end developers to ensure successful integration and delivery.
- Created multiple components for a site builder, including image galleries in jQuery, and a small JavaScript library to handle user's subscriptions to various sport sites.
- Worked in compliance with Agile Scrum methodology. Gave induction training to new team members.
Experience
Engravers Guild UK
https://www.engraversguild.co.ukCompetencies:
Planned, owned, and developed new features on the main shop page (WordPress and WooCommerce).
Performed regular site speed and site security audit performed in-house using cutting-edge tools.
Developing a new standalone API for generating photo realistic engraving previews on product images (PHP, Imagick).
Automating order process - printing the order sheet, shipping label, and gift card are all automated and out of the printer whenever an order needs to be packed and sent (AWS, AWS Lambda).
Closely following current search trends and signals and making small adjustments to site SEO to boost conversions.
Boosted Boards Blog
Team Covenant
https://teamcovenant.comIn 2021, the client decided to expand its area of operations to the UK. I spent Q1 and Q2 developing a solution for supporting multiple fulfillment locations in WordPress and WooCommerce. This was achieved via a custom plugin that based on stock availability and customer's address determines which fulfillment center should process the order.
The project also utilizes a very popular plugin WooCommerce Subscriptions and a lot of custom functionality was added to work on top of it. To pick one, I developed a plugin to renew subscriptions automatically not only by time but also when certain goods are released. This proved to be especially useful for collector's cards and foils that are only released to fans few times a year.
B6 Real Estate Advisors
https://b6realestateadvisors.comIn addition to theme creation, I also developed a custom plugin for B6 to handle API work to pull property listings for their brokers on the team page and a map search on the listings page.
My Perfect Volkswagen
My Perfect Volkswagen is an app that helps people to choose a car based on their needs. It accepts user criteria for their vehicle (like color, transmission, engine type, and so on) and shows a list of matched cars as a result. Vehicles are sorted into different categories: "Perfect Match" through "Good Match" all the way to "Poor Match."
The app accepts user custom features like changing the color of the background of a model page to match the car color. It allows the user to view a model page, preview photos, and read some basic information about the model. The user can then continue building the actual car in the Car Configurator, which is initiated with all the options from the app already selected.
PLATFORM_
http://platform.lifeThe client's website was done in the Zend framework before and didn't provide many options for their content management team. Redoing this website in WordPress while keeping the look and feel but adding some new small features improved things a lot. The client can now edit every single element on the website and we also achieved better loading times by reducing the CSS size and utilizing the W3 Total Cache plugin.
Convertelligence
https://www.convertelligence.no/Sachse Construction
https://www.sachseconstruction.comI’ve completely rewritten their outdated .NET codebase to WordPress. The client decided not to go for a complete redesign, so I’ve implemented responsive features to an old design.
Technologies: WordPress, SCSS, jQuery
GetYourExBackPermanently Blog
https://getyourexbackpermanently.com/blogThe theme was created from designs provided by the client and fine-tuned to perfection. It features many layout options that admin can choose from. Every text area seen on the website is editable either through the content editor or managed by widgets.
To make it lightning-fast on mobiles, the theme also has its AMP version for an instant content load.
Friedman Real Estate Integrated Solutions
The site features a one-of-a-kind search page with a map search and custom pins. Under the hood of this search engine lies complex code that translates all of the user-entered options into a custom SQL query to achieve the best performance and scalability.
The property flyers management features a user-friendly interface for creating, editing, and sending or printing flyers without leaving the WordPress interface. An HTML email with the flyer is automatically sent to a list of potential clients, and a printable PDF is added to the property post meta immediately after creation, allowing users to download it while viewing a property page.
Technologies: WordPress, PHP, MySQL, SCSS, JavaScript, jQuery
Education
Incomplete Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and Applied Informatics
Technical University of Košice - Košice, Slovakia
High School Diploma in Computer Engineering
High School of Electrical Engineering and Informatics - Košice, Slovakia
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Backbone.js, Node.js, React, jQuery, WordPress API, Stripe, WordPress REST API, ImageMagick, WooCommerce API
Tools
ITerm, Vagrant, Chrome Developer Tools, FreeMarker, Adobe Photoshop, Vim Text Editor
Languages
JavaScript, PHP, HTML, CSS, SQL, SCSS
Platforms
WordPress, WooCommerce, MacOS, Docker, AWS Lambda, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Shopify, Visual Studio Code (VS Code)
Frameworks
CodeIgniter, Grails
Storage
MySQL
Paradigms
Kanban, Scrum, Agile Software Development, REST
Other
WordPress Plugins, PSD to WordPress, WordPress Multisite, Elementor, Web Development, WooCommerce Subscriptions 2, PayPal
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