Hey I'm Graeme (sometimes known as Pumba), a Web Engineer and Software Developer based in New Zealand. Since 2007 I've gathered a variety of digital skills and have worked with dozens of talented designers, developers, entrepreneurs and digital agencies in Europe and throughout New Zealand.

I've worked with most of the popular PHP CMS and MVC frameworks and more recently with Node and its cohorts. I'm currently building a multi-player scrabble-type game with Vue 3, Postgres and Typescript.

Outside of work I enjoy the traveling, songwriting, theatre, cooking, gardening and lucid dreaming. You can see some of my original music from the lockdown era here on YouTube.

My work involves many acronyms and initialisms, such as:

HTML CSS JS PHP ES6 JSX SEO TS SDK API GUI JSON LESS OOP REST CMS BEM CURL CDN DNS SSH MVC WIP SQL SCSS SCP MVP CLI WCAG XML CRUD URL SaaS HTTPS

Some of my work over the last decade:

  • 2019-2023

    ES6, React, Redux

    Tourwriter

    app.tourwriter.com For over 4 years I worked closely with a senior Agile team to create version 2.0 of Tourwriter's core product: an online version of their legacy .NET offering. I was instrumental in implementing many of the core features in a stack of React / Redux / Material-UI, created a Wordpress plugin, then in 2022 completely overhauled the testing framework from Enzyme to React Testing Library.

  • 2019

    React, ES6, Flexbox

    Place-Trace

    www.place-trace.com A challenging geography game that uses live data from the REST Countries API. It's a Javascript rebuild of my first PHP site from 2006, but this time using React, ES6 and SASS.

  • 2018

    Silverstripe, CWP, Solr

    MBIE GCCRS

    www.gccrs.govt.nz With a timeframe of 6 weeks from briefing to production, this was a great example of how a finely-tuned multi-functional Agile team can deliver great results with a very tight timeframe and limited budget. Working with DNA and MBIE I built this site using a codebase we inherited from another agency and that I incrementally improved during builds for tradingstandards.govt.nz and pikeriverrecovery.govt.nz

  • 2017

    Silverstripe, Pure, BEM

    Kiwirail

    www.greatjourneysofnz.co.nz From November 2016 and for the next 2 years I worked with the fantastic team at DNA. For this project I built the vast majority of the front-end using BEM methodology and the Pure.css framework whilst greatly increasing my knowledge of Silverstripe's back-end. Daily meetings with the client ensured that the process went very smoothly and was a big win for everyone involved.

  • 2016

    Concrete5, Gulp, SASS

    Oyster Bay Wines

    www.oysterbaywines.com In 2016 I worked with digital agency Spitfire and boutique designer Paola Dashwood to build this charming little site using the open source CMS ConcreteCMS. Despite several setbacks and challenges along the way, the site was delivered on time with all of the desired features due to a great collaborative effort and perseverance to deliver a top quality product.

  • 2015

    Angular, Google Maps

    Schoolz.NZ

    www.schoolz.nz A personal site that I built as a way to learn AngularJS and as an aid to house hunting.

  • 2014

    Drupal, LESS, Isotope

    Meredith Connell

    www.mc.co.nz Early in 2015 I built the front end for NZ law firm Meredith Connell's new Drupal website with the talented folks at Insight Creative. Although the back-end developer was in Wellington and I was working in Auckland, we collaborated daily and were able to deliver the polished product one week ahead of schedule using modern technologies such as git, beanstalk and of course the good old telephone.

  • 2013

    Silverstripe CMS, SASS

    Silver Fern Farms

    www.silverfernfarms.co.nz During a contract role with Colenso BBDO, I skinned the mobile version of this website as well as contributing to campaigns for massive clients such as BNZ, Burger King, Fonterra, Frucor and Volkswagen.

  • 2012

    Drupal, SOAP, XML

    Scopevisio

    www.scopevisio.com During my time in Germany, I was employed by Scopevisio AG and spent a large amount of my time there building their company website with Drupal. With a minimal amount of plugins being used, I wrote most of the code myself and much of the content is generated using XML files and through Web Services using SOAP and JSON. During my time at Scopevisio, I really felt that I had made the transition from intermediate to senior developer.

  • 2011

    Wordpress, jQuery

    NZSO

    www.nzso.co.nz The final site I worked on with The Church and the last site I built which was non-responsive, I wrote the entire front-end in the form of a Wordpress theme for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra website. During my time at The Church I also built sites for Toyota, RJ's Licorice, Ngati Toa Rangatira, Toi Whakaari and Fingertapps.

  • 2010

    Wordpress, jQuery

    HITO

    www.hito.org.nz As the sole developer at Wellington design agency +The Church+ (since consumed by Designworks), I plotted with some amazing designers to product many custom Wordpress themes, including one for the NZ Hairdressing Industry Training Organisation (HITO). I worked closely with the client on a daily basis through the whole process and helped transform their many ideas and desires into a slick digital platform.

  • 2009

    E-Commerce, ASP.NET

    DryitOnline

    www.dryitonline.co.nz As well as this site, in 2009 and 2010 I wrote the entire front-end for over 50 websites with Solutionists and integrated these into their custom .NET e-commerce CMS framework. I also scripted over 100 HTML EDMs in Campaign Monitor for Overland Footwear, Barkers and others. Most of the sites I build for clients such as Overland, Huffer Store, Deuce Shoes have since been replaced but a couple that remain unchanged are Big Man Clothing, and NZ Ministry of Health.