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 is an established leader. 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 onboarding.
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.