Professional experience.

My first job abroad — and for a long time, the only Sunbytes representative in my timezone on the Recurrent project, a US publisher. The distance bred responsibility: I learned WP VIP, Next.js, TypeScript, and spec-driven development with AI directly in practice, without a safety net. In parallel, I started leadership initiatives through the Extreme Ownership framework — technical training sessions and bi-weekly open forum meetings. The relationship with the client grew solid enough to turn into friendship.

I joined when the company fit in a room with two desks and left when they occupied a full floor at Berrini. At the start, it was just me and a WordPress blog with no documentation or process — I left behind a distributed architecture with Laravel, WordPress, a Node.js BFF, and React frontends, all built with the team. I survived four leadership changes and grew from developer to coordinator of a 10-person team — which we later split into two teams, each with its own coordinator. I put in place the processes that never existed: agile, scrum, performance reviews, and a feedback culture.

What started as a three-month project turned into 2.5 years. I joined as the company's only PHP developer — no Git, no documentation, no process. I evangelized version control adoption, even though it was one of my first real experiences with the tool. Beyond maintaining the existing platform, I built an e-procurement system for the purchasing department from scratch.

A startup where I built a homegrown ecommerce builder: analysts could assemble full layouts without writing a single line of CSS or HTML, through a visual interface I designed and built myself. It was an Elementor before I ever knew Elementor existed — simpler, more homegrown.

My first job as a developer — I got it while still finishing a technical course, knowing only ASP/VBScript. When I said I didn't know PHP, my friend replied: "In ASP you open with <%, in PHP you open with <?. Come work here." I worked my first month during vacation from another job to pay for college. It was also where I spotted WordPress's potential and started studying it on my own.