Tomas Stark, Developer in Bratislava, Bratislava Region, Slovakia
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Tomas Stark

Verified Expert  in Engineering

WordPress Plugins Developer

Bratislava, Bratislava Region, Slovakia

Toptal member since September 28, 2016

Bio

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

Toptal
WordPress, PHP, MySQL, WordPress API, REST, AWS Lambda...
The Theme Foundry
WordPress, WordPress API, PHP, MySQL, Backbone.js, React
Tribal DDB London
WordPress Plugins, React, Backbone.js, Node.js, Grails, JavaScript, CSS, HTML

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

Part-time

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

2016 - PRESENT
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.
Technologies: WordPress, PHP, MySQL, WordPress API, REST, AWS Lambda, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Principal WordPress Engineer

2016 - 2020
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.
Technologies: WordPress, WordPress API, PHP, MySQL, Backbone.js, React

Senior Web Developer

2014 - 2016
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.
Technologies: WordPress Plugins, React, Backbone.js, Node.js, Grails, JavaScript, CSS, HTML

Developer

2008 - 2016
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.
Technologies: WordPress API, WordPress Plugins, Node.js, React, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, MySQL, PHP, WordPress

Web Developer

2011 - 2012
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.
Technologies: FreeMarker, JavaScript, CSS, HTML

Engravers Guild UK

https://www.engraversguild.co.uk
Complex software development for Engravers Guild Ltd. based in London, UK.

Competencies:
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

I wrote a new blog for a well-known electric skateboarding brand, Boosted Boards. It was built on WordPress with a custom-coded, easy-to-use solution for handling CTA sections by the marketing team. It was launched in line with its new electric scooter product, Boosted Rev.

Team Covenant

https://teamcovenant.com
WordPress development for an amazing community-driven project, Team Covenant. Since I inherited this project after a previous developer, the day-to-day mostly involved maintaining the site and addressing scaling issues as the site grew in customer base relatively quickly.

In 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.com
My primary role in this project for B6 Real Estate Advisors based in New York City, US was to convert Sketch files to a fully functioning WordPress theme. Elementor was installed for ease of editing any content without a need to go into a code editor.

In 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

I worked on this Backbone.js app while working at Tribal DDB London in 2015.

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.life
PLATFORM_ is a fully integrated investor, developer, operator and asset manager of purpose-built residential communities throughout the United Kingdom.

The 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/
Convertelligence is an innovative machine learning and AI company. This project was about improving their website by turning Sketch files provided by the designer to a responsive WordPress theme.

Sachse Construction

https://www.sachseconstruction.com
Sachse Construction is a US-based real estate agency.

I’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/blog
A brand new WordPress theme with lots of custom functionality for the high-traffic GetYourExBackPermanently blog.

The 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

This is a complex corporate website for a leading real estate agency based in Michigan (US). The site was built entirely in WordPress with a lot of custom plugins to handle a search functionality and generating flyers for properties in both the email and printable version.

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
2009 - 2011

Incomplete Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and Applied Informatics

Technical University of Košice - Košice, Slovakia

2005 - 2009

High School Diploma in Computer Engineering

High School of Electrical Engineering and Informatics - Košice, Slovakia

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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