Senior web developer · 20+ years · AI in the toolbox
Twenty years of instinct.
Now at AI speed.
AI has changed how developers work. It hasn't changed what they have to deliver. Two decades of building websites and web applications for agencies and brands who can't afford the project to go sideways — now with AI doing the heavy lifting and experience doing the steering.
Robust · Scalable · Secure
The part nobody puts in the demo
The speed is real. So is the cliff.
Anyone can get a prototype running with AI in a weekend. I've watched it happen — and I've been the one who gets the phone call six weeks later.
The code looks right, reads right, and falls over the moment real users, real data and a real deadline show up. AI doesn't know what it doesn't know. Twenty years of projects is exactly that list.
Experience, amplified
Where the instinct came from.
Every project here taught me something you only learn by shipping it. AI is now part of how I work, so those lessons reach further, faster, across more of the stack — from JavaScript and PHP, Stripe and Shopify, to embeddings and AI search.
Energy Upgrade California
A five-language campaign site and custom SMS engine for California's energy-saving push.
100K text messages sent every week
- Craft
- PHP
- Twilio
- SMS
Supercell
Community sites and in-game news feeds for seven of the world's biggest mobile games.
100M+ daily players
- Craft
- PHP
- JavaScript
- 12+ languages
PageProofer
A visual feedback tool that drops into any website so teams can mark up pages in place.
600K pieces of feedback and counting
- JavaScript
- Laravel
- Craft
- Stripe
Thermacell
A site refresh and Shopify store built to sell, and to learn from every visit.
1M mosquitoes killed
- Shopify
- Klaviyo
- Craft
- Analytics
Top10ERP AI Concierge
An AI concierge that turns fifteen years of ERP research into grounded, cited shortlists.
950K+ businesses rely on the data
- Laravel
- pgvector
- Claude
- React
What I shipped
I built a custom Craft module on Twilio that sent 100,000 text messages every week, each one a yes/no energy challenge in the subscriber's own language. Every reply got its own animated GIF back, and each person's results were tracked so they could win some swag.
See the project →What I shipped
With Firstborn, I helped scale Supercell's community sites and in-game news feeds to serve 100+ million players a day in over a dozen languages. I streamlined how every Craft install stayed in sync across environments, and open-sourced Migration Manager along the way.
See the project →What I shipped
I built PageProofer from the ground up, every part of it, front end to back end. It runs inside other people's websites, so it has to look right and leave the host site alone wherever it lands. Thirteen years later it's still running, with thousands of people using it every day.
See the project →What I shipped
For Thermacell's Shopify store I integrated Klaviyo and built advanced visitor and shopping analytics, so their marketing knew exactly who to talk to and when. All of it runs alongside the checkout, never in front of it, so tracking never gets in the way of a sale.
See the project →What I shipped
Buyers describe their business in plain language and get a shortlist built from Top10ERP's verified product data. I built the concierge to know exactly where every answer came from, and cite it. If the data doesn't support it, it doesn't say it.
See the project →How I actually use it
AI is the power tool.
I've built the house before.
I use AI every day. It makes me faster at the parts that were never the hard part — which leaves more time for the parts that are.
What I hand to AI
- →Boilerplate, scaffolding and the fiftieth CRUD screen
- →First drafts of tests, migrations and refactors
- →The "how does this API work again" lookups
- →Documentation nobody wants to write
What never leaves my desk
- →Architecture that still makes sense in year three
- →Security, and your client's data
- →Knowing when to say "don't build that"
- →Reading between the lines of the brief
- →The call at 11pm the night before launch
Senior judgement × AI speed = what used to take a team
Years shipping for the web
Projects completed (I lost count)
Daily players on Supercell sites I worked on
Businesses relying on Top10ERP
Country versions of Logitech
Coffees consumed. Conservatively.
Big projects. Big stakes.
Getting it wrong was never an option.
Olympic deadlines. Hollywood launches. A hundred million players a day. I've spent twenty years on projects where the date doesn't move and the whole world is watching.
Now add AI. Same instincts, same standards, with the heavy lifting done in a fraction of the time. That means we can swing bigger, harder and faster than ever.
-
2009
Paramount
Beam me up
- The stakes
- A photo mosaic booth promoting a Hollywood blockbuster.
- The result
- A side project of mine, noticed by Hollywood and put to work for the Star Trek movie.
-
2012
NBC
The Olympic deadline
- The stakes
- Hundreds of media outlets, thousands of secure assets, and a July 27 opening ceremony that wasn't moving.
- The result
- Ready for the world's biggest sporting event.
-
2017
Google
Google who?
- The stakes
- Building alongside Google's own developers.
- The result
- YouTube came knocking with the next one.
-
2019
Supercell
Ready to rumble
- The stakes
- Seven games, 100+ million daily players, a dozen-plus languages.
- The result
- A streamlined Craft workflow, and open-sourced plugins including Migration Manager.
-
2021
Energy Upgrade California
Saving energy by text
- The stakes
- Five languages and a custom SMS engine for California's energy campaign.
- The result
- A few hundred thousand text messages sent.
-
Next
Your project
Bigger. Harder. Faster.
- The stakes
- The one everyone else says is too big, too tight or too late.
- The result
- Twenty years of instincts, with AI doing the heavy lifting.
Scroll → · more on the projects page
Every project is in a different situation
Which one sounds like yours?
The situation
More work than your team can handle. Deadlines slipping. You need a senior developer who can parachute in, understand the project fast, and deliver — without hand-holding, client drama, or cutting corners.
Where AI + experience comes in
AI gets me up to speed on an unfamiliar codebase in hours, not days. Experience means I know which of its suggestions to ignore.
White-label. No client poaching. Just clean work, on time.
The situation
Years of hard-won knowledge buried in spreadsheets, scattered docs, and the heads of a few key people. You need it answering questions and automating the repetitive work.
Where AI + experience comes in
A custom AI tool built on your own data — grounded, private, and actually accurate. Not a chatbot that makes things up.
Built Laravel-first, running lean. No mystery infrastructure bill.
The situation
Someone vibe-coded a prototype and it worked well enough that people are now depending on it. Nobody's quite sure how it works, and it's starting to creak.
Where AI + experience comes in
I untangle it, keep what's good, and rebuild what isn't — so it can survive real users and a second developer.
I've been untangling messes other people left behind for twenty years. This is just a newer kind.
The situation
Content scattered across legacy systems, frustrated editors, and a setup that can't handle multiple languages or traffic spikes.
Where AI + experience comes in
A clean, structured Craft CMS build — with AI speeding up the migration grunt work so the budget goes where it matters.
Editors love it. Developers don't have to babysit it.
Case study · Top10ERP AI Concierge
Fifteen years of data. Finally, answers instead of homework.
I helped rebuild Top10ERP in 2021 and have maintained it ever since — so when it needed to get smarter, I already knew the data inside and out. That history is the whole trick.
Buyers now describe their business in plain language and get a grounded shortlist, built from Top10ERP's verified product data. No wading through comparison tables. No invented features.
Laravel · PostgreSQL + pgvector · Claude · Inertia + React
Sitting on data like this?We're a 200-person food manufacturer, multi-plant. Need lot traceability and a way off QuickBooks.
Three systems fit a multi-plant food manufacturer your size, each with native lot traceability and a documented QuickBooks migration path. Here's how they compare on the requirements you mentioned…
Every answer grounded in real data. If it isn't there, it isn't said.
Who have I worked with?
Brands that couldn't afford to get it wrong.
We hired Derrick on contract to complete a web application project for one of our clients. Timelines were extremely tight, but Derrick was always calm under pressure and came through for us in a huge way. His attention to detail, flawless execution, and depth of knowledge in front- and back-end web development are only a few of many of Derrick's strengths.
Having Derrick as a developer has been a game changer for us. He continually gets our projects done to perfection and on time. With our site being a critical resource for over 950,000 manufacturing and distribution businesses, we couldn’t afford any missteps. We’re thrilled with the results and couldn’t recommend more highly!
Not all the skills we need can be brought in-house. Sometimes we have to hire contractors. Generally, I view this as a necessary evil. However, in Derrick's case, it was a great experience. He not only had the knowledge and skills, but understood what we needed and got it done.
Derrick's smart contributions to the project, his willingness and ability to use our processes, and his openness to feedback were all incredibly important to getting it over the finish line. I specifically appreciated how he was able to think creatively about how to solve the problems at hand. The client is very happy and they started getting real sales this week.
Derrick is a wealth of information! Not only is he incredibly communicative but deeply analytical, technologically skilled and does immense topic research. I am pleased and proud to have worked with Derrick as I gained personal knowledge through this experience. Highly recommend as he is someone you can speak with on a practical level to get positive results.
Deploys on short notice. Batteries not included, coffee is.
Just tell me where the repo is.
If you made it this far, you probably have a project worth talking about. Tight deadline, tricky problem, a stakeholder asking why it isn't done — that's where I do my best work.
