Job Placement Digest
I debug WordPress systems, document root causes, and turn recurring failures into constraints.
WordPress since 2012 · Former WordPress.com Happiness Engineer · Open-source WordPress AI contributor · Chicago
I’m pursuing Support Engineer, WordPress VIP because I want the work itself: complex WordPress troubleshooting, clear customer communication, technical documentation, and prevention of repeat incidents.
Published 13 Jul 2026 · Last verified 21 Jul 2026
Why Support Engineer now
Support is where enterprise WordPress failures become concrete. I want the work because it combines technical diagnosis, customer communication, and the evidence needed to improve the platform.
I worked in WordPress.com support in 2012, consumer-side rather than enterprise. That experience taught me to listen past the first description of a problem and find what the system is actually doing. Since then, I’ve shipped WordPress themes and plugins, documented upstream behavior, reported failures precisely enough for maintainers to release fixes, and delivered one named client site whose implementation can be inspected.
Solve complex customer problems, document what caused them, and help prevent the next occurrence. Over time, I want to grow into broader customer-facing technical leadership in the WordPress ecosystem.
Current Support Engineer fit
| What the role asks for | Strongest proof |
|---|---|
| WordPress development and troubleshooting | HPerkins Tokens, Flavor Agent, and AI Provider for Codex |
| Code-level root-cause investigation | Production focus-ring regression and WordPress AI issues |
| Written technical communication | Merged documentation, issue reports, and release notes |
| Customer-facing technical work | WordPress.com support and the named DJ Lee & Voices of Judah delivery |
| Git and collaborative repositories | Upstream WordPress contributions, pinned commits, and tagged releases |
| Enterprise monitoring and scale | Gap: I do not yet have a public enterprise-scale monitoring or incident record. |
Three proofs, each open to inspection
Merged · verified 21 Jul 2026
Upstream WordPress contribution
Claim: I wrote and refined experiment documentation across eight files in WordPress/ai PR #501; maintainers merged it and credited it in the 1.0.0 release notes.
Support relevance: The work turns product architecture into maintainable guidance and shows that I can iterate through maintainer review.
Shipped v2.1 · verified 21 Jul 2026
Shipped provider
Claim: AI Provider for Codex v2.1 is a stable WordPress AI provider release using a local sidecar and ChatGPT-managed authentication, with capability-gated image generation and runtime diagnostics.
Support relevance: The release makes authentication, capability detection, and runtime boundaries explicit enough to diagnose.
Shipped · v0.3.53 · verified 21 Jul 2026
Token-governed live site
Claim: HPerkins Tokens v0.3.53 is the released theme behind this site; the résumé, theme styles, and integrity route were verified against deployed theme commit 43d9ef6.
Support relevance: The theme is a live, versioned system with explicit authoring constraints, deployment identity, and regression checks.
Inspect release v0.3.53 · deployed theme commit 43d9ef6 · Read the HPerkins Tokens case study
Fixed · regression covered · verified 21 Jul 2026
Production debugging: the focus ring disappeared after deployment
Symptom
Keyboard focus rings appeared locally but disappeared after deployment.
Root cause
Parent global styles referenced a removed palette token; production optimization reordered the stylesheets, allowing the invalid declaration to win.
Fix
I increased selector specificity without discarding the parent’s other button rules.
Prevention
I updated the Chrome verifier to reproduce production stylesheet order and assert the focus ring across viewports. The fixing commit records the viewport run; the 21 July evidence review independently confirmed the source change and regression-test addition, not a new rerun of that full matrix.
The constraint is narrower than the slogan
Within the standard block-editor controls this theme governs, authors cannot introduce arbitrary colors, gradients, font sizes, or spacing. Those choices resolve to a named token vocabulary in theme.json. Custom code and database-owned content remain governed through review, snapshots, and verification.
A recurring class of palette-review work moves from manual enforcement into the authoring system. That does not make drift impossible everywhere; it makes the governed editor choices explicit, testable, and cheaper to change.
Evidence register
States describe what the linked artifact proves as of 21 July 2026. A release candidate stays a release candidate, an open issue stays open, and a mutable profile is dated rather than treated as an immutable record.
| Artifact | State | Direct evidence |
|---|---|---|
| One-page Support Engineer résumé | One page · searchable · verified 21 Jul 2026 | Download the public PDF |
| WordPress contribution record | Two merged pull requests · one open pull request · verified 21 Jul 2026 | PR #501 merge commit · PR #593 merge commit · open PR #757 |
| WordPress/ai PR #501 | Merged 18 May 2026 | Merge commit b9f820d |
| WordPress/ai issue #529 | Closed · maintainer fix shipped in 1.0.1 | Issue #529 · fix merge commit |
| WordPress/ai issue #732 | Open · verified 21 Jul 2026 | Provider-agnostic request-logging issue |
| AI Provider for Codex v2.1 | Shipped · stable release 2 Jul 2026 | Release v2.1 · pinned commit |
| HPerkins Tokens v0.3.53 | Shipped · deployed theme commit verified 21 Jul 2026 | Release v0.3.53 · deployed theme commit 43d9ef6 |
| Flavor Agent v0.1.0-rc.3 | Release candidate · tagged 13 Jul 2026 · no final v0.1.0 release | RC3 commit e6a7fb3 |
| Flavor Agent v0.1.0-rc.1 contracts | Release candidate · 30 contracts · tagged 22 Jun 2026 | Pinned RC1 registration source |
| Flavor Agent current branch | 54 commits ahead of RC3 · release gates not established green | Current commit a924b9b |
| Flavor Agent current contracts | 35 contracts on current branch · verified 21 Jul 2026 | Pinned current registration source |
| DJ Lee & Voices of Judah delivery | Live frontend sampled against pinned source · email delivery not independently tested | V2 commit d57262e |
| WordPress Job Market Screen — Live States | Live-state ledger · 20 rows · reconciled 21 Jul 2026 | Open the sanitized seven-column sheet |
| Placement Method and Evidence | Live appendix · verified 21 Jul 2026 | Read the published appendix |
The method stays inspectable without becoming the pitch
The keyword ledger, screening questions, denominators, current row states, delistings, and human overturns live in a separate appendix. The main case is the work I want and the proof I can show; the appendix is how I kept the search from outrunning that proof.
A next step, stated plainly.
Bring me the problem behind the ticket.
I want Support Engineer work where the symptom matters, the root cause can be documented, and the next occurrence can be prevented. If that is the problem in front of your team, let’s compare notes.