Vitaliy

Vitaliy Kuzmich
Senior WordPress Engineer | WooCommerce · Gutenberg · Headless WP
[відкрити контакти](див. вище в блоці «контактна інформація»)• [відкрити контакти](див. вище в блоці «контактна інформація») • github.com/vitaliy-kuzmich

Core Web Vitals: fail → pass · Publish cycle: 2 months → 1 day · Plugin stack replaced by one
custom plugin · 12 years of engineering

PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY
WordPress engineer with an enterprise software background, twelve years in total. The work tends to arrive
from sites that outgrew page builders: slow, plugin-heavy installs losing traffic and sales, and businesses that
need a custom platform rather than a template.
Custom plugins, themes and Gutenberg blocks, written and version-controlled like real software with
Composer, tests and a staging pipeline. The hosting side is covered too: caching, Core Web Vitals, security
hardening, backups.

SELECTED ACHIEVEMENTS & IMPACT
 Turned failing Core Web Vitals into passing scores, with load times down from several seconds to under
one. Organic traffic and conversions lost to slow pages came back.
 Rebuilt a heavy data-driven page path with object caching, denormalised queries and background
processing. The result was three orders of magnitude faster and made a larger hosting plan unnecessary.
 Cut the time to publish a change from two months to one day, replacing copy-over-FTP deployment with a
version-controlled, Composer-managed staging-to-production pipeline. Broken live sites stopped
happening.
 Replaced a stack of overlapping third-party plugins with one custom plugin. Fewer security exposures,
lower licence spend, and updates that no longer break the site.
 Built custom Gutenberg blocks and content models so non-technical editors could ship complex pages
without a developer in the loop.
 Delivered a greenfield product from empty repository to production in under three months, moving the
launch forward by a quarter.
 Recovered compromised installations, then locked down permissions, update policy and backups so the
incidents stopped recurring.

TECHNICAL SKILLS
WordPress Core: WordPress 6.x, custom plugin development, custom theme development, Gutenberg block
editor, custom blocks (React / JSX), block patterns, full site editing (FSE), custom post types and taxonomies,
custom fields, hooks, actions and filters, shortcodes, WP-Cron, WP-CLI, multisite, WordPress coding standards,
migrations
Commerce & Plugins: WooCommerce, WooCommerce extensions and hooks, catalogue and checkout
customisation, payment gateway integration, subscriptions, Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), Elementor, Yoast
SEO, WPML / Polylang, Gravity Forms, membership and LMS plugins
Headless & APIs: WP REST API, WPGraphQL, headless / decoupled WordPress, Next.js and React front-ends
on WordPress data, third-party REST and GraphQL integrations, webhooks
PHP Stack: PHP 7.x / 8.x, SQL, Composer, PSR standards, object-oriented PHP, MVC and service-layer
patterns, Laravel, Symfony components, Timber / Twig, Roots Sage, Bedrock
Front-End: React.js (Hooks, Context, Redux), TypeScript, modern ECMAScript (ES6+), Angular (Angular 2+)
and AngularJS, Vue.js, jQuery, HTML5, CSS3, SASS, Tailwind CSS, Bootstrap, Webpack, Vite,
@wordpress/scripts, responsive and mobile-first design, cross-browser compatibility, accessibility (WCAG)
Performance & SEO: Core Web Vitals, page-speed tuning, object and page caching (Redis, Memcached, WP
Rocket, Varnish, LiteSpeed), CDN configuration, image optimisation, lazy loading, database query profiling,
technical SEO, structured data, Google Analytics and Tag Manager
Databases & Hosting: MySQL / MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Redis, Elasticsearch, schema design, indexing, query
tuning, Docker, Nginx, Apache, PHP-FPM, cPanel and managed WordPress hosting, GNU/Linux administration,
SSL/TLS, backups and disaster recovery, staging-to-production workflows
Quality & Tooling: Git, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, PHPUnit and WP unit tests, PHPStan, PHP CS
Fixer, Xdebug, Jest, code review, technical documentation
Security: WordPress hardening, OWASP-aware secure coding, XSS / CSRF / SQL-injection prevention, nonce
and capability checks, role and permission management, OAuth 2.0, JWT, SAML 2.0 SSO, GDPR-aware data
handling, malware cleanup and recovery
Also works with: Java and Spring, Go, Python, Node.js on adjacent backend services

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Senior Full-Stack Web Engineer — Purchase Order & Catalogue Platform
Confidential Client (NDA) · Enterprise Procurement | 10.2023 – 12.2024
 Extended a business-critical ordering platform with new catalogue, workflow and reporting features across
back end, database and front end.
 Rebuilt tangled legacy modules into maintainable, testable components with clear interfaces, reducing
recurring production issues.
 Worked directly with non-technical stakeholders to shape requirements and delivered releases in short,
reviewable iterations.

Senior Web Engineer — Checkout & Identity Verification System
Confidential Client (NDA) · Retail / E-Commerce Technology | 01.2022 – 08.2022
 Delivered a biometric fingerprint-authentication extension for a retail checkout product: hardware
integration, verification service and operator UI.
 Implemented secure session handling, capability checks and role-based permissions around sensitive
checkout operations.
 Managed deployment, on-site debugging and handover documentation for the client's internal team.

Senior Web Engineer — Customer Feedback Platform (Greenfield)
Confidential Client (NDA) · SaaS Product | 09.2021 – 11.2021
 Built a customer-feedback product from scratch: content model, REST API, database schema, admin
interface and public-facing pages.
 Selected the architecture and toolchain and delivered a production-ready launch inside a fixed deadline.

Senior Full-Stack Engineer — Fleet Management Web Platform
Confidential Client (NDA) · Logistics & Transportation | 07.2021 – 01.2022
 Modernised and supported a large legacy web platform, refactoring critical areas while keeping the live site
continuously available.
 Fixed production issues around data consistency, concurrent updates and third-party telematics
integrations.
 Owned both server-side and JavaScript front-end delivery for the module.

Senior Engineer — Healthcare ERP & Reporting
Confidential Client (NDA) · Healthcare | 09.2020 – 04.2021
 Built new modules and fixed defects in a production system handling sensitive patient and billing data.
 Delivered a high-volume analytics and reporting service, and optimised the slowest database queries and
page loads across the application.

Senior Full-Stack Engineer / DevOps — Developer Tooling & Web Integrations
Confidential Client (NDA) · Atlassian Ecosystem | 12.2019 – 06.2021
 Developed core extension components from scratch on top of a third-party platform API and integrated
them with internal services.
 Owned Docker environments, Jenkins CI/CD pipelines, staging/production workflows and release
automation.
 Standardised branching, code review and deployment practices for the team.

Backend & E-Commerce Engineer
Confidential Clients (NDA) · Online Retail | 12.2017 – 03.2019
 Delivered catalogue, order and reporting functionality for an online shop, including complex SQL analytics
for the business team.
 Integrated third-party services, payment-related workflows and single sign-on providers into existing
commerce systems.
 Improved site reliability and performance through query tuning and caching.

Full-Stack Engineer & Linux Administrator — Web Platforms and ERP
Confidential Clients (NDA) · Enterprise & FinTech | 01.2015 – 05.2017
  Delivered a childcare ERP web platform from scratch: data model, business logic, administration UI and
public interface.
 Architected an integration layer linking a large enterprise platform with 20+ external services and
protocols.
 Administered production Linux hosting: Nginx, application servers, FTP, mail and DNS, plus SSL and backup
strategy.

Software Engineer — Trading Platform, Real-Time Clients, Mobile
Confidential Clients (NDA) · Trading, IoT & Mobile | 04.2013 – 09.2015
 Built back-office modules, reporting and data-access layers for a clustered broker platform.
 Delivered real-time web and desktop clients consuming live data streams, plus Android applications with
REST integrations.

OPEN-SOURCE & PERSONAL ENGINEERING PROJECTS
Self-hosted cloud storage server — Author of an open-source Nextcloud alternative for low-resource
hosting: storage, sharing, authentication and HTTP API, with a JavaScript SPA front-end.
Upstream contribution — Reported and fixed a defect in a widely used open-source security framework,
found during a ProFTPD and SQL integration.

EDUCATION & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Master of Science, Information Security Engineering — University of Technology, Dnipro, 2007 – 2012
Professional Software Engineering Program (certified) — SoftServe, 2012

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Languages: English — professional working proficiency; Ukrainian — native; Russian — native
Work Style: Remote-first, distributed and cross-functional teams, Agile / Scrum / Kanban, code review
culture, mentoring of mid-level and junior engineers
Interests: Cycling, hiking, strength and endurance training, embedded electronics, open-source contribution