Walt Grayson

Summary

I have over 15 years of experience working with teams to build websites. I have a proven track record of focused, high-quality work as both a full-stack web developer and user experience designer. I love building high-quality sites, stores, and apps.

Experience

  1. to Present

    Marketing Web Developer, Sonic — Santa Rosa, CA

    • Working with the marketing team and cross-department groups on web development and user experience design.
    • Front-end: Building optimized, responsive, and accessible content for the Sonic.com website.
    • Backend: Developing Drupal modules to extend site features and functionality.
    • User Experience: Supporting cross-department projects with wireframes, task flows, and other UX documentation.
    • Integrations: Working with tools like Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Salesforce, and more.

  2. to

    Full-Stack Developer, ZDCA Design & Development — Santa Rosa, CA

    • Working with project managers, designers, and other developers to plan and execute site launches, new feature development, bug fixes, and maintenance.
    • Backend: Website development and maintenance on WordPress, Drupal, Django, and custom PHP frameworks.
    • Front-end: User interface development with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Working with a variety of frameworks, preprocessors, and libraries.
    • E-commerce: Shopify development including custom theme work, app integrations, and Ruby scripts.
    • Hosting: Developed lifecycle process for WordPress and Shopify sites from initialization through post-launch maintenance.

  3. to

    Founder, Grayson Consulting — Burlingame & Santa Rosa, CA

    • Full-Stack Development: Front and backend development for a wide variety of clients using a broad range of languages, frameworks, and platforms. Including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, Sass, Bootstrap, jQuery, Laravel, WordPress, Shopify, and Squarespace.
    • User Experience Design: Worked with clients to distill business goals and user needs into task flows and wireframes, responsive interactive prototypes, and visual design comps.
    • Hosting: Managed VPS hosting for client websites on platforms such as DigitalOcean, Linode, and AWS.
    • Publishing: Development of flowing and fixed layout eBooks (EPUB 3.0) for Amazon Kindle and Apple Books.

  4. to

    Senior User Experience Designer, SAY Media — San Francisco, CA

    • Responsible for the design and usability testing of the company’s internal and customer-facing web applications, including:
      • SAY Media’s partner portal through which websites configure their ad tags and track their earnings.
      • An advertiser report generator which builds configurable campaign reports in seconds.
      • A media planning tool which generates prices for a given set of target parameters.
    • Worked with product managers, engineers, and customers to develop specs, wireframes, visual designs, as well as usability testing procedures in order to produce simple, powerful, and fun web applications.

  5. to

    Senior Designer, Six Apart — San Francisco, CA

    • Designed and developed scores of new features and functionality for some of the most popular blogging services and platforms.
    • Worked principally with product managers and back-end engineers to design first-class user experiences for the products.
    • Developed front-end interfaces for posting, designing, and managing blog content with HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
    • Designed and implemented a mobile web app interface for TypePad which was subsequently called out by our CEO in an Apple press release.
    • Assisted the marketing team with the TypePad product website, e-mail marketing campaigns, “widget” gallery, and developer site.
Show past work

  1. to

    Interaction Designer, TMP Worldwide — San Diego & San Francisco, CA

    • Developed information architectures and task flow diagrams, designed screen schematics, and defined use cases for interactive projects.
    • Worked with project managers to identify and define the scope of projects based on client, end-user, and technical requirements.
    • Built and tested prototype interfaces, applied usability research to projects, and created user-centric web-based software for our clients.
    • Worked with a diverse set of clients e.g. Time Warner, Kaiser Permanente, Nestlé USA, Warner Bros., Charles Schwab, and Jack In The Box.
    • Began as a front-end (HTML) and back-end (PHP) programmer with web graphics production and traditional print design skills.

  2. to

    Creative Marketing Intern, MP3.com — San Diego, CA

    • Worked with the creative director to define brand guidelines and establish rules for using the company’s logo, fonts, and corporate colors.
    • Designed and produced several new aspects of their intranet and created interactive presentations with Shockwave and Acrobat.

  3. Summer 1999

    Quality Assurance Intern, Macromedia — Redwood Shores, CA

    • Worked with QA engineers to ensure the quality and reliability of Macromedia’s Dreamweaver 3 software product for Mac and Windows.
    • Wrote and performed procedures designed to test Dreamweaver 3’s new and enhanced features in order to identify and eliminate bugs.

  4. Summer 1998 and Summer 2000

    Contract Consultant, Aquent Partners — San Diego, CA

    • Contracted to perform consulting work through the marketing and creative services agency Aquent Partners (formerly MacTemps).
    • FSP Network (Summer 2000): Performed interactive design and web production for financial and insurance company portal web sites.
    • Harcourt Brace Professional Publishing (Summer 1998): Tuned the layout of dozens of publications and made editorial corrections.

  5. Summer, 1995 to 1997

    Production Designer, Costill Graphics — Santa Rosa, CA

    • Produced high-resolution film, Iris, and color laser prints. Handled high job volumes and assisted clients with preflight issues.
    • Performed design work for some clients including image editing and page layout. Performed maintenance on hardware and software.

Education

  1. University of California, San Diego — Revelle College

    Degree: B.A. Visual Arts, ICAM (Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts Major)

    Area of Focus: Computer Science and Engineering
    • Visual Arts: Web design, interactive media, photography, film history, experimental film, audio and video production, and more.
    • Computer Science: C++ fundamentals, logic, object-oriented programming, assembly languages, web publishing languages, and more.

Technologies

Web Software, Standards and Servers

  • Server-side Environments: I have experience building web applications with PHP and MySQL as well as configuring and managing Linux systems like Ubuntu and CentOS (using VPS services like DigitalOcean, Linode, and AWS) and web servers like Apache and Nginx.
  • Front-end Standards: I have a lot of experience building sites with HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. I enjoy using CSS preprocessors like Sass and Less. I am very comfortable working with JavaScript libraries and frameworks like jQuery, React, and Angular. As well as front-end frameworks like Bootstrap.
  • Frameworks and CMS Software: I have experience working with Laravel, CodeIgniter, WordPress, Squarespace, Drupal, and Movable Type.
  • Additional Tools: I routinely use package managers like npm and Yarn, build automation tools like gulp and webpack, dependency managers like Composer, and a variety of other similar tools.

Apps and Operating Systems

  • Web and Mobile Design: I use apps like Sketch and Photoshop for visual design. OmniGraffle for wireframes. To demonstrate workflow, I use prototyping tools like InVision.
  • Web Development: In addition to the software and tools listed above, I also use apps like BBEdit, Sublime Text, GitHub, JIRA, and SourceTree.
  • Print Design: I have a lot of experience using InDesign and Illustrator for a wide variety of print projects.
  • Operating Systems: I routinely use Mac and iOS devices, as well as Linux-based web servers. In addition, I use the iOS Human Interface Guidelines and Google’s Material Design spec regularly in my work.

Elsewhere

References

I’m happy to provide references upon request. Please feel free to contact me for more information.