Barry Hughes
Code Wrangler (Software Engineer) at Automattic
Duncan, British Columbia, Canada
Summary
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RockstarBarry Hughes is a seasoned software engineer and WordPress specialist with 14 years of experience and a decade of remote-first work, currently a Code Wrangler at Automattic. He focuses on backend PHP, database interactions, and performance-minded fixes, contributing to high-profile open-source projects like The Events Calendar, WooCommerce and Action Scheduler. Barry has led WordPress teams as a tech lead at Modern Tribe and advised clients as a consultant, translating complex requirements into reliable, customer-facing solutions (notably improving checkout and background job robustness). Based in Duncan, BC, he combines pragmatic engineering with attention to data integrity and test quality, and is known for thinking deeply about software design and edge cases.
13 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
Github Skills (15)
unit-testing10
wordpress10
woocommerce10
php10
event-calendar10
database-design10
mysql10
ecommerce10
testing10
apidoc9
object-oriented-programming9
api9
rest-api8
phpunit7
html5
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
woocommerce/action-scheduler
Feb 2021 - Jan 2023
A scalable, traceable job queue for background processing large queues of tasks in WordPress. Specifically designed for distribution in WordPress plugins (and themes) - no server access required.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:4 releases, 309 reviews, 133 commits in 1 year 11 months
Contributions summary:Barry primarily worked on improving the test suite for the action-scheduler library. Their commits include refactoring test cases to address inconsistencies due to global state, adding secondary scheduled date checks, and fixing verbiage in test descriptions. They also made updates to the database store, including adding additional safety checks and updating the schema, and addressed issues related to handling hidden columns in the UI.
scalablewordpress-pluginsqueueswordpressno-server
the-events-calendar/the-events-calendar
Oct 2013 - Sep 2019
The Events Calendar WordPress plugin
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:39 releases, 1801 commits, 631 PRs in 6 years
Contributions summary:Barry primarily worked on improving the codebase by implementing various fixes and enhancements. The commits involve updates to database interactions, ensuring data integrity, and enhancing performance. Furthermore, the user addressed specific issues related to displaying dates and ensuring that the views are correct. These changes demonstrate the user's focus on functionality.
eventscalendarwordpressthe-events-calendarcalendar-events
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