ABOUT

My career path has been a bit windier than most including work as a carpenter, cabinetmaker, small business owner, magazine and website content writer, web developer, software engineer, technical author and coding instructor.

I started learning to code a little over ten years ago, shortly after the birth of my daughter, while taking a break from my construction job for a brief and wonderful stint as a stay-at-home dad. I found a new calling in the craft of coding, and after completing a Professional Certificate in Python programming at the University of Washington, went on to work for web agencies and enterprise companies as a web developer and software engineer.

You can read more about my career transition in this profile featured on the UW Continuum College website, where I've also taught adult learners as a Python Instructor and Instructional Assistant for several years.

In addition to my range of professional experience, my domain knowledge from working and/or building software in the construction, non-profit, health and transportation industries gives me a unique insight into the digital aspects of these fields. And much of this knowledge is transferrable to whatever unique space in the market your business serves.

These days, anyone can put together a decent looking website using one of many online website builders such as Squarespace, Wix, Shopify or WordPress. So why should you pay a professional web developer to build your website when it seems like you could do it much cheaper on your own?

When you look at the time spent choosing from the website templates these platforms offer, learning to use their design and content management tools, and adding your own content and media to your site, it can add up quickly as lost time you could have spent doing what you know best - running your business.

Add to that the energy spent worrying whether the site you’re building is going to look distinctive and professional enough to bring in new business, and you’re likely to find that investing in a reasonably priced website built by a professional web developer provides a lot of value and saves you trouble and headache in the long run.

But more importantly, online website platforms operate by allowing nontechnical users to create their own sites within a narrowly defined range of options. This results in a lot of cookie cutter websites that look and feel the same. Although you can often add your own logos and choose some of your own design elements such as fonts and colors on these platforms, it can be frustrating to try and create something that uniquely captures the character of your business.

When you hire a professional web developer, they can build a complete custom website in the same, or even less time than it would take you to build yours with a website builder from scratch. Hosting costs are often cheaper for custom websites managed by a web developer as well which adds up to long term savings for your business, and it’s easier to add the best 3rd party plugins and online services to a custom website because you aren’t locked in to using only a single website platform’s plugin system or marketplace.

In addition to building custom websites, I can also build fully-featured web applications, business automation solutions and internal software tools to help you harness the power of data visualization and analysis for your business.

I've worked directly with startups and large scale enterprises to build both public-facing and internal software tools and apps that meet their unique business needs, help to bring in more customers and automate the boring and repetitive tasks that eat up far too much time in day to day operations.

Maybe you've got an idea for the next big startup, or maybe you just want to spend less time on paperwork and more time on the fun parts of running your business. Either way let's talk.

Maybe you're at the stage of your business's life cycle where you don't need convincing of the value of building a customized digital presence for your company. Why would you choose to work with a solo freelance web developer rather than going with a full-service digital agency?

For projects of a certain scope and level of complexity it does make sense to level up and work with an agency that can provide in-house professional project management, design and development services. I've worked for and continue to contract with some great digital agencies myself as an external member of their engineering and management teams and I am happy to refer your business their way if I don't feel like I can provide adequate value or meet your expectations working on my own.

But for a lot of projects, a solo developer with advanced technical skills, partnerships with collaborators to draw upon when needed, and a knowledge of the ecosystem of 3rd party tools, resources, plugins and APIs available to streamline your digital projects without reinventing the wheel provides a lot of value.

And a single dedicated developer will have the ability to work more directly in partnership with you and your business through all phases of the web and application development process.