Oronaut Labs

I have been doing web design and development in one form or another for more than two decades, starting with my own personal website as a kid back in about 1998. Coincidentally that was same year Google launched it's first search portal - but back then you also joined "web rings" to help people discover your website, and no one could call you on the phone while you were browsing the "world wide web".

While websites are still built with HTML, a few things have changed since then. Once a fun novelty, now an effective, beautiful website is crucial for every business and organization. The very first step for many businesses, non-profits and other ventures is a website now, and vast fortunes have been built solely in this wonderful virtual space we call the Internet.

I cut my teeth building websites for small business websites and non-profits - classic Drupal and WordPress CMS stuff. I still enjoy building websites, and have stayed up to date on recent improvements and trends in technology - like blazing-fast static "Jamstack" sites. I have also enjoyed watching legacy software like Drupal improve and mature, and when a CMS like Drupal is the right tool for the job I'm on board. Regardless of the back-end technology powering a website, I love the art of creating sites with good bones that are easy for search engines to index, accessible to people with disabilities, easy to update, and also - beautiful.

The second act of my career was as a co-founder and technical lead with a couple of startups, working remotely with a mostly Montana based team. We built websites and large scale social media marketing applications for over 100 brands and agencies, including some big names like ALDI, Degree, Dish Network, L’Oreal, Scrubbing Bubbles, Seattle’s Best Coffee, Vikings-History Channel, Vitamin Water. Our signature apps were Facebook tabs, and #hashtag photo contests and sweepstakes on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. We supported our projects with content management tools we built in-house. A second startup venture was a big data platform and client portal for endurance sports brands like Spartan, Xterra Off-Road Triathlons and Tough Mudder. This involved engineering back-end services to ingest and process data from 3rd party applications, and front-end business intelligence and analytics dashboards for our clients.

I am currently open for contract work through my Oronaut Labs LLC as a freelance developer or project consultant, alone or working with your existing team. I'd love to be a part of your next website, web app, or revolutionary API.

Tech Experience

• Full-Stack Web Development
• Modern PHP 7/8
• Drupal 8/9
• Magento 2
• Node.js
• Front-End JavaScript (React)
• Static Jamstack Sites
• AWS, Linux Server Management
• Relational SQL Databases (PostgreSQL, MySql)
• API Design and Development
• NoSQL (DynamoDB, MongoDB)
• Python