Phillip Clapham

Enterprise WordPress Engineer & Web Infrastructure Architect

PHP · JavaScript · Performance · Security · Accessibility · AI-First Development Workflow

Columbus, OH·(740) 919-1142·me@phillipclapham.com
phillipclapham.com·claphamdigital.com·github.com/phillipclapham·linkedin.com/in/phillipclapham

Available now for contract, fractional, and project engagements. Remote, US-based.

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Summary

Twenty years building, hosting, securing, and rescuing production WordPress and web properties, from single-owner sites to Fortune 500 enterprise architecture, most recently as the sole Senior Solutions Architect for Pressable's (Automattic) highest-value enterprise portfolio. Custom themes and plugins from the ground up, PHP and modern JavaScript, the block editor, hooks, and the REST API, plus the infrastructure underneath: performance, caching, migration, security, uptime.

AI-First Development Practice

Author of A Structural Theory of Harnesses (April 2026), the first theoretical account of harness engineering as a named discipline. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19570642 Claude Code has been daily production infrastructure since September 2025.
Multi-model adversarial code review: every significant change is reviewed by independent model lineages, because a reviewer sharing the author's training distribution shares its blind spots. Layered with deterministic checks, grounding against source, and human sign-off — systems built to be governed, not trusted.
Supporting tooling shipped open source: anneal-memory and Levain, both on PyPI. The result is AI-assisted delivery speed without the unreviewed-code debt that usually comes with it.

Experience

Independent Solutions Consultant — Columbus, OH (Remote)

July 2026 – Present · Previously November 2011 – October 2024 · Accepting engagements

Solo advisory and delivery for organizations with no supporting firm behind them — OCCRRA, Marana Healthcare, nonprofits, government-adjacent clients. Full-lifecycle ownership as the only technical resource: custom theme and plugin development, solution design, hosting, migration, security, accessibility, training.
Client relationships sustained for years, several past a decade — the only real measure of whether the work held up. Translated technical decisions for non-technical stakeholders and boards, then executed them.

Pressable (Automattic) — Senior Solutions Architect / Technical Account Manager

October 2024 – July 2026 · Remote

Sole technical account manager for Pressable's highest-value enterprise WordPress portfolio. Authored tooling that shipped as how the whole organization operated.

WordPress.com and WordPress VIP to managed-host migration tooling, including automated Gutenberg block replacement. Thousands of migrations through the WP Engine / Automattic disruption; trained support teams on the playbook.
Authored the org's load-testing and capacity-planning tool, its primary instrument for infrastructure sizing and performance validation. Released publicly as MicroChaos CLI (PHP, WP-CLI) — load testing from inside WordPress for managed environments where external tools are blocked, simulating authenticated users, WooCommerce flows, REST endpoints, and warm or cold cache.
WooCommerce performance engineering that cut full seconds off checkout flows and preserved multi-six-figure accounts that were actively churning.
Performance-audit workshop pattern — backend profiling, architecture review, tailored remediation. Adopted org-wide; enterprise customers called it more valuable than paid consulting engagements.
100+ competitive technical evaluations and enterprise pilots — frontend comparison, backend architecture analysis, empirical capacity math — roughly 45 through a harness I automated.
Partnered with Fortune 500 technical leadership through C-suite on infrastructure strategy, translating architecture tradeoffs into revenue, risk, and cost terms. Delivered a live full-stack WordPress performance walkthrough for The WP Minute (May 2026).

Forefront Web — Lead Support Developer · Dublin, OH (Remote)

July 2020 – October 2024

Led development and support across 300+ web properties, and rebuilt customer engagement from reactive ticket-handling into structured technical enablement.

Cut average resolution time from 2–3 weeks to under 2 days by redesigning workflows and adding proactive outreach.
Built technical training for junior developers and authored Digital Security for Website Owners for the client base; the security enablement program tripled return business from high-trust enterprise clients.

InflatableOffice — Web Developer · Akron, OH (Remote)

February 2018 – May 2020

Custom ecommerce platforms; infrastructure for 300+ client sites across 10+ servers.

Technical Skills

WordPress

Custom theme and plugin development from scratch, hooks and filters, PHP APIs, block editor and Gutenberg, REST API, WP-CLI, multisite, WooCommerce, ACF, Elementor, WordPress VIP and VIP migrations, migration at scale, performance profiling with Query Monitor and New Relic, security hardening, managed-host and self-hosted.

Core Web Development

PHP, modern JavaScript (ES6+), TypeScript, HTML5, CSS3, responsive development, accessibility and WCAG-minded implementation, secure coding, code review. Also Python, SQL, MySQL / MariaDB, Go, Swift, Laravel.

Hosting, Infrastructure & DevOps

Linux, nginx and Apache, cPanel / WHM, Redis and Memcached object caching, Varnish, Cloudflare and CDN, DNS, SSL/TLS, load testing and capacity planning, incident response, uptime monitoring. AWS (EC2, S3, RDS, CloudFront, Route 53), Docker, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, Git, staging and deploy.

Education & Certifications

Musicians Institute, Hollywood CA · Udacity Mobile Web Specialist · freeCodeCamp Full Stack · Google Analytics Certified