Filipe Varela
Director Of Product Design, Jetpack at Automattic
Évora, Évora, Portugal
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolFilipe Varela is a design-driven engineering leader with 13+ years crafting front-end experiences and product design, currently directing Product Design for Jetpack at Automattic. A self-taught “pixel chef” who rose through roles from design engineer to director, he blends visual communication, typography, and information architecture with hands-on React and full-stack contributions to high-profile open source projects like wp-calypso and Jetpack. He’s shipped UI features across checkout, plans, and app cards, and has a track record of refactoring and adding components that improve usability and performance at scale. Based in Évora, Portugal, he balances product leadership with ongoing freelance work and a lifelong curiosity for photography and filmmaking. That visual practice informs his design sensibility—he approaches interfaces like a photographer frames a shot, prioritizing clarity, hierarchy, and craft. Known internally for pragmatic code + design ownership, he pairs creative instincts with measurable product outcomes.
13 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
Instituto Politécnico de Portalegre
Github Skills (12)
wordpress10
css10
uid10
javascript10
front-end-development10
ui-design10
wordpress-plugin10
react10
jsx10
plugin10
php9
redux7
Programming languages (8)
Github contributions (5)
Automattic/wp-calypso
Mar 2017 - Jul 2022
The JavaScript and API powered WordPress.com
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:197 reviews, 209 commits, 281 PRs in 5 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Filipe primarily focused on front-end development within the `wp-calypso` repository. Their contributions included fixing UI issues, updating copy, and adding new features to the activity log, plan purchase, and checkout pages. They worked extensively with React components, and the changes involved updating styles and incorporating new UI elements. The user also addressed issues in the Jetpack Cloud sections.
apireactwordpressjavascriptes6
Automattic/jetpack
Sep 2014 - May 2022
Security, performance, marketing, and design tools — Jetpack is made by WordPress experts to make WP sites safer and faster, and help you grow your traffic.
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:102 reviews, 99 commits, 92 PRs in 7 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Filipe primarily contributed to the front-end development of the Jetpack plugin, as evidenced by the addition of a new apps-card component that included JSX, styles, and a readme file. They also made updates to the My Plan page, adding components and styling, and refactored code to remove old references to the apps page. Additionally, the user modified PHP files for shortcodes such as YouTube and Vimeo, adding new features for them.
reactexpertswordpressphpsecurity
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