About

Agency seniority, in the work

Three years at a mid-sized digital agency (Matrix Group International) as Frontend Developer (2022-present). Second-most-senior of four WordPress developers: code review, mentoring, onboarding, estimates, and direct client communication. I can own a workstream, not just tickets.

Zak Goldwasser

Practice

Professional skills

  • Client meetings and direct client communication
  • Project estimates
  • Code review — second-most-senior of four WordPress developers; reviewed and directed two junior developers
  • Onboarding and mentoring new developers

Skills matrix

What I work in

WordPress

Three years, agency depth.

Custom plugin development
Hooks/filters architecture, background jobs, admin UIs.
Custom Gutenberg blocks & patterns
Vue + ACF blocks; block bindings.
ACF
Options pages, custom templates, block bindings, flexible content.
Custom REST API endpoints
Directories, secure proxies.
Multisite
Page builders
Divi, Beaver Builder, Elementor, plus custom and legacy themes, including sites up to 10–15 years old.
Migrations
Legacy CMS → WordPress, scripted (database → CSV → PHP → custom post types and taxonomies).
Integrations
OAuth SSO, AMS platforms (Impexium, Fonteva, Growthzone, netForum, Membersuite, Nimble, Higher Logic), OpenAI APIs.
Accessibility
Scans and remediation — a genuine specialty as agencies need this for compliance.
Caching
WP Rocket, Redis, host-level (WP Engine, Kinsta) and builder caches.
Image and asset optimization
Imagify, SVG-first, minified JS/CSS.

Beyond WordPress

Frontend
React, Vue, Next.js.
Backend
Node.js, Python, PHP.
AWS
Lambda, DynamoDB, API Gateway, EventBridge, Secrets Manager, S3-adjacent workflows, AWS Personalize.
IaC
Serverless Framework, AWS SAM.
AI
RAG pipelines, vector stores, OpenAI APIs (chat, TTS), streaming responses.

Hosting & Tooling

Hosts
WP Engine, Kinsta, Pantheon, EC2 (SFTP deploys).
Git
GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket.
Local development
LocalWP.