Vasken Hauri joins 10up as Director of Strategic Engineering
Vasken Hauri on
If you’re the kind of person who frequents WordCamps, jQuery conferences, or higher ed tech events, there’s a chance you may have already met me. If not, here’s a quick rundown of the diverse, wide-ranging, and somewhat eclectic set of skills I’ve honed over 12 years, and why I’m excited to bring them to 10up.
I’ve been working with WordPress since 2006, when I began using it for my personal blog. Since then, I’ve engineered WordPress to create everything from order fulfillment and tracking applications to APIs that withstand several hundred thousand hits per day. I’m proud to have been able to contribute some of the more generally useful pieces of this work back to the community, including several plugins hosted on the WordPress repository, changes to WordPress core, and assorted open-source Github projects.
A previous job in higher ed afforded me an opportunity to pursue and earn a Master’s Degree in Business Administration, and I was able to leverage those skills while working as a developer and Team Leader at GigaOM over the past two years. I’ve worked on every stage of major projects, from data modeling and wireframes to final style tweaks and coordination of release marketing. Having spent nine years working in higher education technology, I know from experience what it takes to engineer successful projects while remaining cognizant of the unique challenges faced by larger institutions when implementing technology solutions.
As Director of Strategic Engineering at 10up, my mission is to guide and enhance our clients’ projects at every level, from the long-term strategic plan to the inner workings of the code, and my experience makes me uniquely suited to accomplish this task. The importance 10up has placed on this role is illustrative of their understanding of changing needs in an increasingly competitive online marketplace, and a desire to maintain the company’s status as a thought leader in creating “amazing web experiences.” Of course, I’m also really glad they picked me for the job.
Editor’s note from Jake: Vasken is that rare breed that can get deep into the weeds of code with an engineer one moment, and then turn around and articulately explain the implications to our partners and clients. With 3 years of experience building high scale WordPress.com VIP projects with GigaOM, and years of experience supporting innovative higher education web initiatives, Vasken has a unique understanding of our market. That he’s managed to get an MBA, make WordPress core contributions, and release a few plug-ins while he’s been at it is amazing, and we’re lucky to have him aboard!