James Higgins

Experience

1. Technical Project Manager

   Falcon Software Company Inc. September 2020 – present

   • Manage web projects for public-sector, healthcare and member-organization clients, now delivered through Falcon's KPMG partnership, owning scope, estimates, schedule and stakeholder reporting.
   • Led Falcon's Microsoft Bing Blogs engagement, managing the Kentico 11 to 13 upgrade, the MVC rebuild of its templates and the move to Azure App Service.
   • Led IBM partner projects for the Government of British Columbia, including the development phase of the BritishColumbia.ca redesign and WordPress migration with multilingual support through WPML.
   • Managed the redevelopment of HealthStream.com, introducing a card-based system of reusable components alongside custom widgets and features.
   • 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.
   • Provide fine-grained time and cost estimates, advise on code architecture and DevOps strategy, and direct UX and UI decisions with client stakeholders.
   • WordPress
   • WooCommerce
   • WPML
   • Kentico
   • Sitefinity
   • Jira
   • Bitbucket Pipelines
   • Webpack
   • Microsoft Azure
   • WP Engine
   • UnderStrap
   • Microsoft Teams

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

   The Rand Group June 2017 – October 2017

   • 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 for a Microsoft Dynamics solutions partner.
   • 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

5. Web Developer

   Noble Pixels January 2018 – April 2018

   • Developed CMS interfaces for user stories across three production applications in an in-house Agile environment.
   • 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

6. Developer

   Soulpepper March 2016 – March 2018

   • Managed and developed the agency's Magento store, RoderickAllan.com, 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

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.
   • Hold every build to professional standards, with clean version history, documented handovers, and attention to performance and security.
   • WordPress
   • WooCommerce
   • PHP
   • Shopify
   • Magento
   • MySQL
   • Git
   • Docker
   • Lando

Education

• Applied Web Development

  British Columbia Institute of Technology

• BA, Philosophy

  University of British Columbia