Engineering for High Traffic Digital Publishing
Software Developer · May 2016 – Aug 2019 · Remote
🚀 Overview
At Alley Interactive, a digital agency dedicated to serving publishers, nonprofits, and commercial clients, I worked alongside multidisciplinary teams to deliver high performance editorial solutions for high traffic websites and content platforms.
Alley’s mission, “we create digital solutions that connect people to news, entertainment, ideas, and to each other”, reflected the purpose of our work. My time there deepened my understanding of how technology enables journalism, culture, and civic engagement.
My role went beyond coding. I contributed to design, development, client communication, performance engineering, and process optimization across a range of industries. Working remotely in a fully agile agency setting taught me how to balance technical quality with creative collaboration and client needs.
🧭 My Role & Scope
Product and Feature Development
I worked closely with editors, UX designers, and product managers to shape requirements and translate them into scalable, maintainable features. Many of these projects involved migrating legacy systems, integrating new editorial workflows, and extending CMS capabilities for large content teams.
System Engineering and Performance
Digital media work demands resilience under traffic spikes and constantly shifting editorial priorities. I focused on building systems that could handle millions of requests while keeping the authoring experience fast and intuitive.
Collaboration and Agency Workflow
Alley was a remote first, distributed team long before it was common. I participated in sprint planning, retrospectives, and code reviews, while helping refine how our engineers communicated progress, tracked dependencies, and collaborated with design and project management teams across multiple time zones.
📌 Key Projects and Clients
During my time at Alley, I worked on a number of high traffic and mission driven sites that reached millions of readers:
- People.com – supported one of the largest lifestyle and entertainment publications in the world, helping optimize editorial tooling and site performance.
- RevealNews.org (CIR) – partnered with the Center for Investigative Reporting to create a digital platform that supports independent journalism and long form investigative storytelling.
- Hachette Book Group – helped design and implement publishing systems and reusable components for editorial teams and authors.
- Wisconsin Public Radio – contributed to audience focused platform improvements and content architecture for a statewide public media organization.
- Additional Nonprofit and Foundation Work – contributed to projects for research institutions and advocacy organizations, emphasizing accessibility, scalability, and long term maintainability.
These collaborations showed me how technology can amplify journalism, empower nonprofits, and help editors work faster and more effectively.
✨ Key Accomplishments
- Delivered bespoke editorial solutions for major media outlets and nonprofit organizations, enabling them to publish and iterate at scale.
- Contributed to the engineering and optimization of high traffic WordPress VIP environments.
- Helped refine internal deployment and development workflows for a distributed engineering team.
- Strengthened cross disciplinary communication between developers, designers, and editorial teams.
- Gained deep experience building for real world newsroom workflows, performance demands, and accessibility needs.
🧱 Technical Foundations
Frontend: JavaScript, React (where applicable), CSS, HTML
Backend and Platform: PHP, WordPress VIP, Gutenberg, REST APIs
Infrastructure and Performance: Scalable CMS architectures, caching strategies, accessibility, performance tuning
Process and Workflow: Agile, sprint based collaboration, CI/CD, remote first communication and code review practices
💡 Why This Work Mattered
Working in digital media means building the tools that power journalism and storytelling. At Alley, I was not just developing features, I was helping newsrooms and nonprofits share stories that inform, inspire, and connect communities.
The systems we built supported investigative journalism, public media, and creative publishing at global scale. Seeing editors and reporters use our tools to publish critical stories reminded me that software can be a force multiplier for truth and transparency.
💬 Lessons Learned
- Build for editors, not just end users. The most impactful products made the publishing process effortless and reliable.
- Empathy and clarity scale collaboration. Working across time zones and disciplines taught me to communicate assumptions early and often.
- Performance is a form of respect. Fast, stable systems empower creative teams to focus on storytelling.
- Mission matters. Supporting journalists, nonprofits, and educators reaffirmed my belief that technology should enable impact.
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