Chris Hartjes' CV

I have been building web sites of all shapes and sizes since 1998, mostly with PHP with some Python and JavaScript mixed in.

I have given more than 100 conference talks since 2003 and done numerous in-person workshops to help developers to get better at testing their PHP code.

I believe in promoting practices and tools that turn business requirements into code that is maintainable and can be quickly deployed into production.

Struggling to get your team's code into production? Finding that you are fixing the same bugs over and over again? I can help with that.

Job History:

Senior Staff Engineer

ZiffDavis Shopping / RetailMeNot Jan 2024 - July 2026 Remote

Worked remotely for the team that builds and maintains the infrastructure for RetailMeNot’s shopper loyalty programs.

• built and maintained custom administration system for managing merchants, offers, and shopping rewards
• designed and implemented APIs for mobile applications
• migrated systems from Python to team’s preferred stack of PHP + Laravel
• helped rebuild high-volume transaction processing with complex validation rules
• import/export systems for critical business data
• scripts for synchronizing data between multiple services
• guided team to use of standardized design and development patterns

Skills: PHP · Python · Laravel · Docker · AWS · Kubernetes · MySQL · PostgreSQL · Web Services · API Development · Automated Software Testing Code Refactoring · Project Migration

Owner

Grumpy Learning Inc. · Self-employed Jan 2012 - Present Lucan, Ontario, Canada

Owner of a consultancy that does PHP software development work and creates books and workshops about testing practices and testing PHP applications.

My books are available via LeanPub and PHPArchitect

Client work has included:

• high-traffic mortgage leads generation site
• multi-client e-commerce system API-driven back-end
• online WordPress travel site integrating with third party CRM’s
• cleaning up and extending existing automated test suites
• ETL and data warehousing
• creating new unit, integration, and functional automated tests
• refactoring legacy code bases
• mentoring staff on incorporating testing, design patterns, and code analysis tooling into workflows
• workshops to introduce teams to testing practices

Skills: PHP · Docker · MySQL · Web Services · API Development · Automated Software Testing · Payment Systems · Refactoring · E-Commerce · · PostgreSQL

Senior Test Engineer

Mozilla Nov 2015 - Aug 2020 Canada

Worked remotely as part of the Ecosystem QA group, with a focus on testing services and products that the Firefox web browser relies on.

• built distributed load testing tool for services
• created automated tests for multiple API’s offered by internal services
• reworked manual tests for Mozilla’s push service to be automated
• converted test suite and helpers for Firefox Telemetry from older Python unittest framework to pytest

Skills: Docker · Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) · API Testing · Web Services · Automated Software Testing · Python