Profiles

Bio

Aaron is a polyhistoric man of the web who knows rabble-rousers get shit done. He has led engineering teams responsible for some of the largest and most prominent WordPress sites in the world including Rolling Stone, Variety, WIRED, The New Yorker, and Joe Biden’s White House. He is also a WordPress Core Committer that focuses on improving developer happiness and making the internet usable and enjoyable by everyone. You can contact him at https://aaron.jorb.in/get-in-touch/

Interests

Usability, JavaScript, Build Tools, Whisky, Smiles, Community, Usability

Badges

CODE
8 badges
Core Contributor '15 Core Team '14 Hosting Contributor '18 Meta Contributor '15 Plugin Developer Security Contributor '22 Security Team '22 Tide Contributor '25
CONTENT
2 badges
Documentation Contributor '17 Photo Contributor '22
COMMUNITY
4 badges
bbPress Contributor '19 B BuddyPress Contributor '19 WordCamp Organizer '19 WordCamp Speaker '19
PRACTICE
1 badge
Test Contributor '22
POLYGLOTS
2 badges
Translation Contributor '16 Translation Editor '16

Job History

Sr. Director of Editorial Technology
May 2018 – Dec 2022
Penske Media Corporation
Hired multiple engineers and lead training and onboarding; doubled the number of engineers and improved
diversity in the process.
Established and strengthen relationships with multiple vendors including negotiating new and expiring contracts.
Lead multi-year effort to update and standardize content editor across 20+ brands.
Rolled out Engineering Career Ladder with standardized salaries and normalized titles.
Oversaw the day-to-day work of multiple teams including direct and matrix reports.
Delivered success on multiple large high profile projects each year.
Enacted the first corporate hackathon and set up processes for future editions.
Improved corporate open-source contributions.
Initiated accessibility improvements including multiple product/engineering training and an organization-wide
workshop.
Redesigned the analytics product used by 20+ brands and senior executives.
Director of Engineering
Sep 2016 – May 2018
Some Spider
Directed product engineering by an internal team & contractors.
Relaunched flagship property, increasing time on site by 16% YoY .
Modeled revenue & costs around video distribution strategies to allow for data informed decisions.
Managed the launch of multiple new brands.
Instituted CI/CD processes leading to increased deployments with fewer side effects.
Technical Architect
Dec 2014 – Dec 2015
Condé Nast
Architected system & performance improvements for six publications.
Migrated infrastructure for six publications onto AWS.
Launched three publications onto WordPress.
Assisted in creating and rolling out standard job titles and descriptions and creating a standard hiring process.
Contributor, Core Committer, Release Lead
Feb 2010 – Present
WordPress
Contribute to over 30 major versions of WordPress, 20+ as a maintainer, core committer, and mentor.
Prioritize tickets to ensure successful and impactful releases.
Triage incoming issues after a major release to ensure maintenance releases are scheduled and executed
appropriately.
Create guidelines for use by contributors in areas including communication, release process, and triaging.
Organize a local meetup group and grow it from less than 20 to over one thousand members in three years.
Plan WordCamp NYC, WordCamp Publishers, & WordCamp US.
Mentor two Google Summer of Code students.
Speak at conferences and events around the world.

Key Accomplishments

- WordPress Core Committer
- Introduced Automated JS Testing to WordPress
- Built grunt-patch-wordpress
- Lead WordPress Core\'s compatibility with PHP 7.0, 7.1, and 7.2
- Deputy Release Lead for WordPress 4.7
- Release Lead for over over a dozen maintaince and security releases

Recent impact

Score weights high-impact work (commits, releases, approved translations, props) at 3x routine activity.

Last 30 days
43contributions
high34
medium9
score111
Last 90 days
118contributions
high103
medium15
score324
Last 12 months
471contributions
high399
medium72
score1269

Team focus

Share of contributions across teams during the last 365 days

WordPress releases

Contributed to 38 releases
  • 7.0
  • 6.9
  • 6.8
  • 6.7
  • 6.6
  • 6.5
  • 6.4
  • 6.3
  • 6.2
  • 6.1
  • 6.0
  • 5.9
  • 5.8
  • 5.7
  • 5.6
  • 5.5
  • 5.4
  • 5.3
  • 5.2
  • 5.1
  • 5.0
  • 4.9
  • 4.8
  • 4.7
  • 4.6
  • 4.5
  • 4.4
  • 4.3
  • 4.2
  • 4.1
  • 4.0
  • 3.9
  • 3.8
  • 3.7
  • 3.6
  • 3.5
  • 3.3
  • 3.2

Time commitment

20 hours per week

Contributions

Type
June 2026
Jun 18 Thu · 21:22
Core med
Reopened ticket #65286 on Core Trac:
major publishing action buttons are crowded in the Publish settings
Jun 18 Thu · 21:20
Core med
Closed ticket #65286 on Core Trac:
major publishing action buttons are crowded in the Publish settings
Jun 18 Thu · 21:20
Core high
Committed [62526] to WordPress SVN:
Editor: Allow publish meta box action row to wrap.
Jun 18 Thu · 21:08
Core high
Mentioned in [62525] on WordPress SVN:
Build/Test Tools: Ensure all built files are deleted as expected.
Jun 18 Thu · 18:56
GitHub med
Created issue #68 in the WordPress/agent-skills repository:
Skills should reccomend the current version of WordPress
Jun 18 Thu · 15:26
Meta med
Wrote a comment on the post WordPress 7.0.1 Release Schedule, on the site Make WordPress Core:
Fixed, thanks!
Jun 18 Thu · 15:26
Meta med
Wrote a comment on the post WordPress 7.0.1 Release Schedule, on the site Make WordPress Core:
Fixed, thanks!
Jun 18 Thu · 14:59
Meta high
Wrote a new post, WordPress 7.0.1 Release Schedule, on the site Make WordPress Core:
Since WordPress 7.0 was released, contributors have kept a close eye on incoming reports to the WordPress.org Support Forums, Trac,…
Jun 17 Wed · 15:23
Meta high
Updated the handbook page When you become a committer on Make WordPress Core.
Jun 15 Mon · 21:13
Polyglots high
Reviewed 1 string on translate.wordpress.org.

Developer

9 plugins

Plugins

2 favorites

Translations

1 locale
art_xemoji 🌏🌍🌎 (Emoji) (Emoji) General Translation Editor Translation Contributor