WordPress consultant, systems analyst
December 2019 - November 2021
Worked on integration projects, upper-tier support and consulting services related to WordPress at the most popular web hosting provider in Iceland. In addition to upper-tier support, my role also includes WP plugin development and related DevOps work, performance audits and infrastructure work.
Code Wrangler (WordPress plugin developer)
October 2018 - June 2019
Worked on Jetpack Sync and the Gutenberg block implementation in Jetpack and WordPress.com as well as internal documentation and accessibility efforts. Other efforts included contributions to the WordPress Core and the Gutenberg editor both during my 11-month trial period and later on as a full-timer.
Senior Ruby Backend Developer
April 2018 - June 2018
Was brought in to help overcome certain development obstacles. Amended workflow and documentation; and drastically improved the Rspec and Capybara based test suite.
Backend developer
August 2016 - June 2017
My role was mostly related to the development and maintenance of data models and JSON API endpoints in Ruby on Rails using JSONAPI::Resources as well as location matching and other features using Elasticsearch, Chewy and PostGIS.
I also revamped many documentation and style enforcement efforts in using the Ruby Style Guide, using Travis, YARD, Overcommit and Rubocop to maintain compliance.
Later on, my responsibilities included work with external app developers and screening, interviewing and training of job applicants and new recruits.
Ruby on Rails Backend developer
January 2016 - April 2016
My role was mainly related to API consumers and web scraping service workers for a Ruby on Rails system used for affiliate marketing. I also supported the in-house blog which was driven by WordPress.
Software and database consultant
2014 - 2016
During my time with the United Nations, I worked on two separate projects. One for UNRWA; the UN programme for Palestine refugees and for The UN Monitoring Mechanism for Syria (UNMM). Both projects required on-site work such as needs analysis and liaison between different departments and agencies.
The first project was an offline-first tablet app built in Cordova, SQLite and AngularJS, which synced with a backend and reporting system built using ASP.Net MVC and Microsoft SQL Server, with data being fed into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet via PowerQuery for further work.
The latter was an extensive Ruby on Rails based data collection and reporting system for humanitarian shipments crossing the Syrian border and related work, with graphs using NVD3 and UI based on ActiveAdmin. The project required extensive coordination with the UNDPO and UNSBV in terms of infrastructure and security due to the limited scope and independence of the UNMM.
Web developer
November 2012 - August 2013
At Verðandi, my role started out as an ordinary web development role, but became closer to a tech lead and system administration job. There, I developed a social media promotion and raffle management system in PHP which I rewrote in Ruby on Rails. This system was later used to determine social media activity based on market segments such as age ranges. The system was used by raffles run for various brands and businesses such as Microsoft, Shell and Landsbanki.
As my career, depending on how it is measured, dates back to the early 2000's, the following is a list of notable projects that I have worked on in the past decade or so.
For the 2021 Christmas edition, I built a new site for the Icelandic Book Journal in association with Mennsk Consulting. The journal is an annual catalog of books that has been published and delivered to households since 1944 and had only been available online as a PDF file until then. The system was set up in Ruby on Rails and integrates with a legacy system built in vanilla PHP, dating from 2003.
During the summer of 2018, I revamped the website of UNA Iceland — un.is. It includes a substantial amount of textual information and educational material that was moved from a proprietary CMS to WordPress. Due to the use of the site in public education, accessibility was highly prioritised.
In 2013, I worked on various projects for the web design agency Kosmos&Kaos. My responsibilities included the implementation of visual designs and adaption for Drupal, WordPress and proprietary CMS', modern web animation design, accessibility design etc. for various high profile clients such as airlines and financing companies.
In the early 2010's, I worked on various WordPress sites related to Iceland-Japan relations; namely conferences and exhibitions. One of those sites is still up at hirosimanagasaki.is, which dates to the autumn of 2012.
WordCamp Vienna
April 2019
Provided a talk on accessibility for those getting into Gutenberg block development. The talk went into the basics of web accessibility, the importance of the semantic web and how those techniques can be used to develop Gutenberg blocks.
Automattic Grand Meetup
October 2018
Provided a flash talk on postal code systems, misconceptions about and the overuse of postal codes, over validation and their use as location indicators as an anti-pattern.
Autumn 2010 - Summer 2011
Spring 2006 - Spring 2008
Autumn 2002 - Spring 2005
| Icelandic | Native speaker |
|---|---|
| English | Fluent |
| German | Basic knowledge |
| Scandinavian languages | Basic knowledge |
For the past couple of years, my WordPress volunteering work has mainly been directed towards maintaining the Icelandic side of the WordPress community, despite me being located abroad. In the past, I have been active in the Icelandic translation group and brief code contributions. My earliest WordPress contribution dates way back, with the container attribute for wp_nav_menu().
I am one of the people who authored the Transgender Flag Emoji proposal to the Unicode Consortium. After being embraced by WhatsApp, Facebook and other vendors prior to Unicode's approval. It was finally included in version 13 of the Emoji standard after a couple of attempts.
I strive to be a good open source citizen and have recently contributed code fractions to projects such as the AtomLinter PHP_CodeSniffer package and xkeyboard-config.