James Higgins

Technical Project Manager & Full-Stack Developer

Vancouver, BC

Open to full-time and contract roles

Six years leading web delivery, grounded in 12+ years of hands-on development.

I lead web projects from scoping and estimation through launch and long-term support, coordinating designers, developers, content creators and QA. Because I have had a hand in every stage myself, designing mockups, writing code from front end to back end, and deploying it to production servers, I am better placed to manage the whole process. I understand what each stage involves, so my estimates reflect how the work actually gets done, my architecture and DevOps guidance is practical, and developers get technical answers from me directly, not relayed through someone else.

I hold every project to the same standard: disciplined version control, repeatable deployments, documented decisions and clean handovers.

Selected work

  • Microsoft

    Bing Blogs

    Managed the upgrade from Kentico 11 to 13, including an MVC rebuild of the templates and a move to Azure App Service.

    Technical Project Manager · Falcon Software

  • Province of British Columbia

    BritishColumbia.ca

    Led the development phase of the province's redesign and migration to WordPress, including multilingual support with WPML.

    Technical Project Manager · Falcon Software

  • HealthStream

    HealthStream.com

    Managed the redevelopment of the corporate site for a US healthcare workforce company, introducing a card-based system of reusable components.

    Technical Project Manager · Falcon Software

Experience

  1. Technical Project Manager

    Falcon Software Company Inc. September 2020 – present

    • Manage web projects for public-sector, healthcare and member-organization clients, owning scope, time and cost estimates, schedule, architecture and DevOps guidance, and stakeholder reporting. Current projects are delivered through Falcon's partnership with KPMG.
    • Led the Bing Blogs engagement for Microsoft, from scoping through the Kentico 13 launch on Azure App Service.
    • Led IBM partner projects for the Province of British Columbia, including the development phase of the BritishColumbia.ca redesign.
    • For the Health Sciences Association of Saskatchewan, launched a WooCommerce merchandise store, redeveloped the collective agreement browser, and currently lead the rebuild of the member information portal.
    • Implemented CI/CD with Bitbucket Pipelines, including Webpack front-end builds and Bitbucket deployments integrated with Jira so stakeholders can trace each release to its tickets.
    • WordPress
    • WooCommerce
    • WPML
    • Kentico
    • Jira
    • Bitbucket Pipelines
    • Webpack
    • Microsoft Azure
    • WP Engine
    • UnderStrap
  2. Technical Project Manager

    NativeAds July 2019 – May 2020

    • Managed web advertising projects end to end, including website builds, PPC funnels, landing pages and lead-generation systems, with detailed time and cost estimates for each.
    • Managed the technical implementation of a private CPA network on the HasOffers/Tune platform, including conversion tracking through postbacks and pixels.
    • Led a company-wide initiative to build a knowledge base and introduce Git version control.
    • WordPress
    • PHP
    • Google Analytics
    • Monday.com
    • Git
    • Slack
  3. Contract Web Developer

    Ryders Eyewear November 2016 – November 2019

    • Maintained and extended the brand's direct-to-consumer WordPress/WooCommerce store.
    • Reverse-engineered and rebuilt the store's automated build and deployment pipeline, with containerized local development in Lando and dev, test and live environments on Pantheon.
    • Delivered features covering third-party marketing and tracking integrations, checkout changes and catalogue restructuring.
    • Produced MySQL reports for business analysis.
    • WordPress
    • WooCommerce
    • PHP
    • Pantheon
    • Lando
    • Docker
    • Git
    • MySQL
    • Gulp
  4. Web Developer

    Noble Pixels January 2018 – April 2018

    • Developed CMS interfaces across three production applications, working from user stories on an in-house Agile team.
    • Created and modified REST API endpoints consumed by reusable Vue.js components.
    • Built admin reporting tables and interfaces using Eloquent ORM and raw SQL.
    • Laravel
    • Vue.js
    • MySQL
    • jQuery
    • Git
  5. Developer

    Soulpepper March 2016 – March 2018

    • Managed and developed RoderickAllan.com, a Magento store for the agency's client Solidsteel, and set up its Git deployment workflow on Beanstalk.
    • Integrated third-party stock data from Google Sheets into Magento with Magmi through a custom PHP cron job.
    • Wrote project proposals for prospective clients and worked alongside SEO, PPC and marketing specialists on campaign tracking.
    • Magento
    • PHP
    • MySQL
    • Beanstalk
    • Git
  6. Web Developer

    The Rand Group June 2017 – October 2017

    • At a Microsoft Dynamics solutions partner, managed and developed the company's own sites, RandGroup.com and Dynamics101.com, and client sites including HoustonSymphony.org, itsolutions.bdo.ca and LSRetail.com.
    • Built responsive front ends in Bootstrap 3 and 4, added multilingual support with WPML, and integrated marketing automation through ClickDimensions and Microsoft CRM.
    • Provided monthly maintenance, updates and cross-browser compatibility reporting.
    • WordPress
    • Microsoft CRM
    • Microsoft Azure
    • WPML
    • jQuery
    • Bootstrap 4
    • Asana
  7. Web Developer & Consultant

    James Higgins Web Development 2013 – present

    • Design, build and maintain WordPress sites for agencies and direct clients, from scoping and estimates through launch and ongoing support.
    • Build and support e-commerce stores on WooCommerce, Shopify and Magento, including custom checkout, catalogue and third-party integrations.
    • Develop and maintain DevOps implementations for client projects: Git-based workflows, containerized local environments, staged dev, test and live deployments, and automated builds.
    • WordPress
    • WooCommerce
    • PHP
    • Shopify
    • Magento
    • MySQL
    • Git
    • Docker
    • Lando

Skills

Delivery

  • Scoping & estimation
  • Backlog & release management
  • Stakeholder reporting
  • Agile & Kanban
  • Partner & vendor coordination
  • DevOps strategy
  • UX & UI direction
  • Team leadership

Engineering

  • WordPress & WooCommerce
  • PHP & Laravel
  • JavaScript
  • Vue.js & React
  • REST APIs
  • SQL
  • HTML, CSS & Sass
  • Webpack & front-end build tooling
  • CI/CD with Bitbucket Pipelines
  • Magento & Shopify
  • LAMP / LEMP

Tools: Jira, Asana, Monday.com, Git, Bitbucket, Docker, Lando, Linux, WP Engine, Pantheon, Microsoft Azure, Kentico, AI-assisted development (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex).

Education

  • Associate Certificate, Applied Web Development

    British Columbia Institute of Technology

  • BA, Philosophy

    University of British Columbia

Let's talk

Hiring a technical project manager, or need a full-stack developer for your next web project? Email is the fastest way to reach me.