Aaron Jorbin is an experienced product engineering leader in the online media space. He has formed and lead teams working on both new and ageless properties. Aaron has been described as “An Engineer’s Engineering Manager” and someone that grows and develops people. He is a sought out public speaker having spoken at over 50 events and delivered multiple keynotes. His community involvement includes 11 years of working on WordPress and 15 years with the education non-profit American Model United Nations.
Work
Penske Media Corporation
since 05.2018
Sr. Director of Editorial Technology
Hire multiple engineers and lead training and on boarding.
Establish and improve relationships with vendors.
Rollout Engineering Career Ladder to organization (20+ engineers).
Oversee multiple teams that include direct and matrix reports.
Deliver multiple corporate top-ten projects each year.
Enact first corporate hackathon.
Improve corporate open-source contributions.
Some Spider
09.2016 – 05.2018
Director of Engineering
Direct product engineering by an internal team & contractors.
Relaunch flagship property, increasing time on site 16% YoY.
Run meetings for stakeholder teams.
Model revenue & costs around video distribution strategies.
Manage the launch of new brands cafe.com and thedad.com.
Happytables
12.2015 – 07.2016
CTO
Lead development on new platform.
Launch initial product in under 3 months.
Organize product planning retreat for twelve stakeholders.
Conde Nast
12.2013 – 12.2015
Technical Architect
Architect system & performance improvements for six publications.
Migrate infrastructure for six publications onto AWS.
Launch three publications on to WordPress.
Privia Health
07.2012 – 09.2013
Sr. Interactivity Engineer
Lead front-end development, user experience design, & user interaction design.
Initiate weekly metrics reports & investigations.
Shift design to a more agile & browser-first paradigm.
AddThis
10.2010 – 07.2012
Web Developer
Build a culture, plan, & system to simplify release cycle .
Develop code loaded over ninety-billion times per month.
Institute accessibility as an organizational priority.
Community
WordPress
since 02.2010
Serve as minor release lead & deputy release lead on a major version
Commit code starting with version 4.1.
Contribute to over 20 major versions.
Organize a local meetup group with over one-thousand members for three years.
Plan WordCamp NYC, WordCamp Publishers, & WordCamp US.
Mentor two Google Summer of Code students.
Open Source
since 09.2007
Lead community development of WordPress Post Forking plugin.
Create a PHP library for emitting metrics as JSON.
Advocate for open source to accessability professionals at AccessU.
Speak at events around the world
American Model United Nations
since 2006
Serve on the Board of Directors starting in 2017
Write topic guides on current events for four years.
Direct a thirty person educational simulation of the current Security Council.
Train a nine person department.
Oversee accuracy for an educational conference.
Teach a realistic international crisis simulation.
Fulfill technology needs as a part of a five person technology team
WhiteHouse.gov
01.2021
Forge block based editor for “The People’s House
Design and implement a custom user experience for content creators in collaboration with two agencies and other volunteers
Win a Webby.
Education
Northern Michigan University
08.2001 – 08.2006
Graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Economics & Political Science.
Formulate an educational enrichment program.
Manage a million dollar budget for campus events.
Establish an improv comedy troupe.