10up Europe

Thorsten is 10up’s first European employee, living near Cologne, Germany with his wife, son and a crazy Beagle. Thorsten worked in software development for over a decade before joining 10up; he led the web development department for a large dedicated hosting company and Germany, and even ran his own web agency in Bulgaria.

From 2008 to 2012, Thorsten was one of the original engineers supporting the Automattic WordPress.com VIP team. He wrote and contributed to essential WordPress developer tools and plugins including Exploit Scanner, Debug Bar Extender, WordPress-CLI-Exporter, and WordPress-CLI-Importer. He is also a core contributor.

From 2012 to 2013, Thorsten did a quick detour into the Cloud Computing, OpenStack and the Python world, working at a start-up called PistonCloud, though he never managed to keep his hands off of WordPress.

When he’s not engineering websites or spending quality time with his family, he’s usually cooking, tinkering with electronics, and developing Arduino style projects.

Evan has been working full-time with WordPress for clients ranging from small firms to international brands since 2010. Brimming with the experience of several small agencies, he has cultivated a robust skillset over the years, with experience in nearly every role related to web development.

In addition to creating bespoke client-centric solutions, Evan also has a unique background in product development with experience in developing and maintaining distributed software used by thousands. His passion for products and desire to give back fuel his own open-source projects as well as his contributions to others.

As an aspiring polyglot and student of software development, he embraces a life of never-ending learning, craftsmanship, and refinement.

After a chance discovery of Microsoft Frontpage on his mum’s old Windows 98 computer, Cameron began building his first websites at 12, laying the foundations for graduating from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland, at 19 with a BSc Computing for Internet & Multimedia.

After spending time with a few companies in oil and gas, he eventually joined his regional news publisher. It was there that a passion for WordPress began. In 2014 as part of the rebuild of The Press and Journal website, he helped construct one of the UK’s first two-way content flows between WordPress and their editorial system, which proved to be one of the formative tools for digital-first workflows. This was then adopted across the other newspapers in the business and became the catalyst for a single large WordPress network powering over 100 websites. He takes a great sense of pride in guiding and mentoring friends and colleagues to replace almost everything he built in the subsequent years, before a – rejected! – pull request brought him to 10up.

When Cameron isn’t being the company’s resident Wookiee, he can be found sinking hours into a book or two, listening to music, working his way through Star Trek again on Netflix, or playing an immersive RPG on his PS4.

Elliott’s passion for web development began when he was 15 years old and he’s never looked back since. Elliott is 10up’s first UK-based employee; before joining 10up he led a development team at a local web agency where he was introduced to WordPress.

Elliott graduated with a BSc honours degree in Computer Science. He loves a good challenge, especially when it involves a deep dive into WordPress’s core. He often contributes to open source projects, develops his own plugins once in a while, and has earned his fair share of badges for his contributions on StackExchange. An aficionado of the popular Easy Digital Downloads WordPress module, he’s both a recognized regular contributor and an extension developer.

When he’s not working with PHP, he likes to tinker with databases and APIs. Elliott also has hands on experience with JavaScript, in particular jQuery and Backbone. He’s often referred to as being “obsessed with neat code,” and is especially particular when it comes to missing indentation.

When he’s “off the grid” he can most likely be caught eating a curry or playing his favorite (and only) sport, Badminton.

Eugene’s adventures in engineering started in the late 90’s when he learned Pascal. After his time with Pascal, he worked with Delphi, C++, and C#, eventually digging into PHP in 2009. Eugene spent some time with frameworks like Symfony and Zend, before finding the platform he decided he wanted to concentrate on in 2011: WordPress.

Since 2011, Eugene has been a freelancer (in the top 10% for PHP on StackOverflow), Senior WordPress Developer at an agency, and a Lead Developer at WPMU Dev. He has an affinity for normalized, maintainable, clean code, and clearly loves a challenge.

In his spare time, he likes a good chess match, skiing in the winter, and “building his own death star to rule the world”.

Lukas is a typical IT geek. He has been working in the field of development for over 14 years. Everything started in a small, Polish town, when his parents bought him his first Commodore C64 computer. Without any doubts, Lukas knew that computers would become his biggest passion. At the age of 14 he created his first ‘database’ application that was an easy phone book. Two years later his first PC computer helped him to develop the hobby.

In 2001, Lukas started his professional career as a network administrator and was quickly hired as a developer in big Polish IT companies. He needed the next five years to work up the nerve to follow his dreams of becoming self-employed. With the Master Degree of Science, a scholarship for education results and strong experience he decided to give it a go and run his own business. Within the next 9 years, Lukas created, developed and serviced plenty of applications (from financial and sales systems to web portals with over 1,000,000 viewers per month) in various technologies like LAMP stack, Java and ASP.net.

Some time ago Lukas felt tired of being a manager, seller, employee and employer in one and started to work abroad remotely for Timely Network Inc. that provides a famous All In One Event Calendar Plugin with more than 100,000 active installs. By looking for more challenging work 10up seemed perfect place for developing his biggest love.

Lukas says that he is a creator rather than a craftsman, mostly focused on WordPress. He can barely be seen around any other place than his computers. But when he is off the computer it means he travels the world with his wife, walks with the dog Rosia (that he fell in love in a dog shelter) or is just watching American TV series, Discovery or National Geographic channels.

Barney is a self-taught developer who has over 20 years experience across front-end development, back-end development, mobile apps and a bit of design thrown in for good measure.

Starting out with an ambition to be a designer, he soon found that code was something he loved and wanted to pursue further. After working for various agencies, Barney set-up as a freelancer in 2008 and worked across a huge range of projects and apps, for clients such as Thames Water, Energy Saving Trust, Virgin

Barney has been contracting with 10up over the last 10 months and loved it so much he decided to transition to full-time. He enjoys being part of a highly skilled team and the drive to do great work.

Having recently moved back to his home county of Cornwall in the South West of England, Barney is finally getting around to learning to surf and enjoys getting out and walking the beautiful coast paths. He also loves music (playing and listening), reading, a good box set and hanging out with his family.

Tinkering with design, video, interactive animation and the wonders of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, Barry’s career started in 2005 designing and developing sites with WordPress. As an independent consultant for over a decade, his focus moved from development to digital product design and back again. His biggest projects have focused on helping design mobile applications for some of the largest European online retail, food delivery and online publishing companies.

Today Barry specializes in creating bespoke WordPress themes and plugins with a knack for simplicity, usability and multi-language sites.

He studied product design and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts. Coming from the south of the Netherlands, Barry now lives in Berlin, Germany, where in his free time he enjoys spending time with his kid and the hustle and bustle of big city life (and the German autobahn).

After realizing that his passion for photography wasn’t going to pay the bills, Daryll started a BSc in Computing. He graduated in 2012 and has been writing PHP ever since.

Daryll worked for a couple of agencies in his home county of Cornwall, where he progressed from a fresh graduate to lead developer, improving his skills along the way. WordPress became a core component of Daryll’s toolbox which he leveraged to architect solutions whenever possible. Daryll has developed WordPress based solutions for countless businesses from small, local companies to multinational corporations and NGOs.

Within the WordPress world, Daryll has made several contributions to core, but Daryll’s best achievement has been Safe SVG; an SVG sanitisation plugin with over 300,000 downloads. Furthermore, this allowed him to give a 40-minute talk at WordCamp London on the subject of SVG security.

A lifelong learner, he hopes to continue honing his skills while learning more about PHP and Javascript development from the team at 10up.

When not writing code, you can find Daryll spending time with his young family, walking around the beautiful Cornish coastline, cooking, or training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in which he enjoys competing.

Fabian is a life long learner, who started his technical journey in school. He was in charge of the marketing, lights and sound for all events happening at his school. While developing sites for events he found his passion for web development, which he later turned into his own agency.

Being passionate about all things creative he combined the two interests design and development, and began workin on custom WordPress themes and plugins. After graduating (and studying abroad in the United States), he jumped all in at his company. He spent five years developing custom WordPress sites for clients and helping them through all forms of media to share their message with the world. Being in charge of a small team and working closely with clients, he refined his skillset and grew as a developer.

When the WordPress team started development on Gutenberg, the new editor for WordPress, Fabian became more active in the WordPress community and began contributing to Gutenberg, TwentyNineteen, TwentyTwenty and other projects.

Away from the computer he spends most of his time outdoor walking with his dog Finn, taking pictures of nature or making movies. Since 2019 he’s also an elected member of his local town council.

James has been interested in the web since the mid-1990’s when his Dad bought a family computer and he worked out how to plug in a modem. Discovering the “view source” link in a browser opened up a new world and he quickly learned how the structure of a page was made.

Despite a small setback when he took a computer apart, rebuilt it, and strangely it stopped working, over the next ten years, he taught himself how to program, build websites and discovered WordPress. After helping a few local businesses with their sites, he realized this was the beginning of a career began working full-time as a freelance developer.

Following this, James was invited to join a Brighton-based agency as a WordPress developer where he worked on (literally) hundreds of projects of all sizes and complexity, providing support, consultancy and engineered innovative solutions to complex challenges. Additionally, he was responsible for defining and introducing processes and mentoring and training colleagues.

Of many notable accomplishments, two that he is particularly proud of are: helping a global brand to significantly reduce page load times through an analytical investigation of their infrastructure and the implementation of a series of improvements; and building a bespoke Multisite setup to allow sub-sub-sub-sub-directory (you get the picture) mapping through a custom ‘sunrise’ process. The clients’ in-house team had spent months trying to accomplish this, and it was gratifying to see how happy they were once this was complete.

James never stops learning and loves to explore new technologies and being intellectually challenged. He has given talks at WordCamp Brighton and Manchester and local WordPress meetups and has a keen interest in WordPress Multisite, infrastructure, and process automation.

In his spare time, James spends time with his two (soon to be three!!) children, swimming, reading and working on side projects. And playing with Lego—who doesn’t love Lego?

James happily discovered a passion for web development by chance in 2012 and hasn’t looked back since. This discovery was somewhat of a surprise to all as it came after studying Sports Science at university and a year teaching English in South Korea. James is largely self taught and has taken learning about web development from something interesting to do into a career.

Initially James cut his teeth interning in London for a small WordPress agency and quickly thereafter moved into freelancing. He feels fortunate to have a job that’s allowed him to follow his other passion – travel. He’s lived and worked as a front end developer in Sydney, Australia and in Vancouver, Canada for a number of years. Now he’s back at ‘home’ in the UK setting down some roots.

“Making things look nice” is one way to describe what James does, but that’d be severely underplaying it. He’s got a great eye for detail, an interest in accessibility and performant CSS animations. A problem solver who favours where at all possible keeping things elegantly simple.

Before joining 10up he was leading the UK development team for the Canadian based agency Domain7. One of the reasons James made the move to 10up was to be part of a fully remote company and to focus on WordPress development.

When not writing code or learning to play the piano James will often be found outside somewhere in the Cotswolds. Whatever the weather he’ll usually be hiking, foraging for food or mountain biking.

Luca is a tech enthusiast with a strong passion for WordPress and automation. He built his first website for fun when he was just 8. 15 years and many different jobs later, his interest turned into a passion. He discovered WordPress and it was love at first sight.

He began his career as a freelancer helping local businesses with their sites and collaborating with some local agencies. A couple of years after, he joined a local agency as a Full-Stack Developer where he mainly worked on WordPress but also some Magento and frameworkless projects. His love for WordPress led him to WordCamp Brighton where he was invited to join one of the biggest WordPress agencies in the UK.

During his time there, he led many successful projects for enterprise clients and developed into a Senior WordPress Engineer. He also helped the company improve processes and workflows. Luca loves learning and sharing his knowledge. He has been speaking at some WordCamps in Italy and in the UK when he can.

Luca lives in Mondolfo, a small village in the middle of Italy and when he’s not working he loves traveling, supporting his favorite football team Inter Milan and binge-watching Netflix shows.

Lucy became interested in computers during her early teenage years: the time where you couldn’t connect to the internet and speak on the phone simultaneously. Although she loved everything about technology, the field of art also piqued her interest, and it wasn’t until her early 20’s when she decided which direction to take.

After successfully completing her studies in filming and photography, Lucy decided to also study web development. She took her first job as a junior developer at a Belgian agency, where she learned alongside a team of experienced web engineers. She later moved on to work with a Spanish agency as a web developer for 7 years. There she got involved in several high profile projects for well known clients. It was during that time that Lucy also became familiar with WordPress: falling in love with the CMS and the amazing community behind it.

Today, Lucy is an active member in the WordPress community. She strongly believes that contributing to the platform is the best way to keep the open source project alive, and that consistent involvement is one of the best ways to continue learning and staying apprised of the latest WordPress updates. To date, Lucy has released a few plugins on the WordPress repository, organizes a local meetup in Valencia, Spain, and occasionally helps out in the WordPress forums.

When she’s not coding, Lucy spends most of her time with her husband and daughter. She also likes cooking, watching Netflix, and loves running to clear her mind.

Maggie has been passionate about technology even before getting her first internet connection. When she saw her first website, she was hooked and decided that wanted to learn how to create one. She learned the basics of programming on her own, started creating blog themes she gave away for free and learned how to use Photoshop and Illustrator.

She then deviated from the programming path and got a degree in language and literature, studying English and Chinese Mandarin. After University, she started working for a publishing company as a book designer. That’s when she realized her passion for technology was still keen, and she moved to London, UK, where she got accepted in a very intense and selective programming bootcamp and properly learned how to code.

Maggie immediately fell in love with frontend development, and in 2015 she got her first job for a digital consultancy where she built different websites, joined hackathons and created various projects, all using different technologies.

She is always keen to learn the newest technology and try out new things; she strongly believes in clean and organized code and follows the best practices. She has a particular passion for transforming visuals and designs into beautiful and pixel-perfect HTML and CSS pages, and also enjoys solving JavaScript problems, debugging, and trying out new frameworks. When she’s not at her laptop, you can find her reading a book, playing with her dog or watching football.

Sergio has been around computers since the age of three. His first computer was an Atari 600XL, followed by an Atari 130XE where later, with the help of his father, he started developing a computer game based on the cartoons of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote.

After graduating from the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Lisbon with a degree in Computer Science, Sergio started working as a Java developer for banks, insurance companies, and telcos. Always passionate about the web, in 2011 he started working full-time as a web developer and discovered WordPress.

Before joining 10up, Sergio spent four years as a WordPress consultant, working on projects for local broadcasting corporations, retailers, media and newspaper companies.

Sergio is an open-source advocate. You’ll find some of his contributions on GitHub and in the WordPress repository where he has released and maintains some plugins. He is also involved in the Portuguese WordPress community through his attendance at meetups and WordCamps. He was also one of the co-organizers of WordCamp Lisbon 2017.

Outside of work, when he is not spending time with his wife and two kids, is always finding ways to expand his knowledge. He also likes to hang out with friends, play board games, travel and watch TV series and movies.

Will is a technologist with a long history of creating and developing in the digital media industry. Having worn a number of hats over his career at various agencies he has a keen interest in the meeting of creativity and technology, an interest that has seen him work alongside and consult with many household brands.

Originally self-taught, Will went on to pursue a Bachelors in Information and Computing before embracing a career amid London’s digital agencies, an environment where he championed best practice, accessibility and performance as well as cross-discipline integration. He believes in creating solutions that work for the user first, whilst also supporting the business and teams designing them.

Will is a family man who recently moved to his wife’s home country of France where they enjoy spending time with their two young boys amid the culinary delights of wine country and are now coming to truly appreciate the value of having grandparents nearby.

By the time József was thirteen, his curiosity led him to create his own web page. He knew that this was the beginning of something great. After he finished his studies, József moved to a hosting/IT solutions company. He was introduced to WordPress and his interest in Cybersecurity peaked. After he successfully received his Certified Ethical Hacker certificate, he transitioned to a company where he could combine his system engineering skills with his security-oriented mind. He suddenly became a Security Engineer.

József has mastered skills like vulnerability scans, server and end-user security, security best practices, and threat modeling. He enjoys hobby projects and learning new methodologies.

When he is not in front of his computer, József likes to hit the gym or cook. He is a big fan of eating and enjoying local handcrafted beers. He also loves playing video games—specifically Dota 2 and Hearthstone.

Michele started building websites as a freelancer in 2003 in Italy, while attending University and has been building websites as a hobby for over 15.

His interest in design and development grew in step, at that period the two figures coincided and, moved by the interest in human-computer interaction, he became a professional full-stack developer.

He understood the potential of WordPress already from the early releases and a few years later joined NTTData as WordPress Specialist where he has been able to work on the largest Italian enterprise projects (telecommunications company, banks, media and e-commerce for large retailers).

When he’s not working on code, you can usually find Michele playing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Grappling, traveling and spending time with his family in Tuscany.