Aaron Jorbin is a product engineering leader focused on scaling. He has scaled organizations from one to multiple brands, from few to many engineering teams, and applications from serving millions to billions of users. As a maintainer of WordPress, Aaron’s code powers over 40% of the web.
Profesional Experience
Penske Media Corporation
05.2018 – 12.2022
Sr. Director of Editorial Technology (Promoted from Director of Editorial Technology)
Hire multiple engineers and lead training and onboarding; doubled the number of engineers and improved diversity in the process.
Establish and improve relationships with multiple vendors including negotiating new and expiring contracts.
Lead multi-year effort to update and standardize content editor across 20+ brands.
Roll out Engineering Career Ladder with standardized salaries and normalized titles.
Oversee day-to-day work of multiple teams that include direct and matrix reports.
Deliver success on multiple corporate top-ten projects each year.
Enact first corporate hackathon and setup process for future hackathons.
Improve corporate open-source contributions.
Initiate accessibility improvements including multiple product/engineering training and an organization-wide workshop.
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.
Model revenue & costs around video distribution strategies.
Manage the launch of multiple new brands.
Institute CI/CD processes leading to increased deployments with fewer side effects.
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 onto WordPress.
Other professional experience also includes engineering positions at startups in health care, publishing technology, and ad tech along with consulting for publishers, non-profits, government entities, and small businesses.
Community and Volunteer
Open Source
Actively participating and contributing since 09.2007
Serve as minor release lead & deputy release lead on a major version of WordPress.
Contribute to over 30 major versions of WordPress, 20+ as a maintainer, core committer, and mentor.
Organize a local meetup group that grew from less than 20 to over one-thousand members in three years.
Plan WordCamp NYC, WordCamp Publishers, & WordCamp US.
Mentor two Google Summer of Code students.
Create a PHP library for performance metric tracking.
Advocate for open source to accessibility professionals at AccessU.
Speak at over 50 conferences and events around the world.
American Model United Nations
Active in multiple volunteer roles since 2006.
Serve on the Board of Directors starting in 2017.
Write topic guides on current events.
Direct a thirty-person multi-day educational simulation of the current Security Council.
Oversee accuracy and educational integrity for a 1500-attendee (college students) conference.
Teach a realistic international crisis simulation.
Fulfill technology needs as a part of a five-person technology team including assisting in switching conference from in-person to virtual to hybrid simulations.
WhiteHouse.gov
Volunteer as a part of Biden/Harris transition team in 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
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.