I'm Ryan Grasell, a WordPress & WooCommerce expert with 10+ years building and scaling e-commerce platforms. I specialize in custom theme and plugin development, secure payment integration, and performance optimization for high-traffic stores. Whether I’m leading full-stack work or collaborating with product and design teams, I focus on delivering maintainable code, robust security, and a great editor experience for content teams. I thrive in fast-paced environments, translating complex requirements into reliable, scalable solutions. My approach combines hands-on development with clear documentation and proactive communication to ensure stakeholders stay aligned and projects ship on time.

Ryan Todd Grasell

I'm Ryan Grasell, a WordPress & WooCommerce expert with 10+ years building and scaling e-commerce platforms. I specialize in custom theme and plugin development, secure payment integration, and performance optimization for high-traffic stores. Whether I’m leading full-stack work or collaborating with product and design teams, I focus on delivering maintainable code, robust security, and a great editor experience for content teams. I thrive in fast-paced environments, translating complex requirements into reliable, scalable solutions. My approach combines hands-on development with clear documentation and proactive communication to ensure stakeholders stay aligned and projects ship on time.

Available to hire

I’m Ryan Grasell, a WordPress & WooCommerce expert with 10+ years building and scaling e-commerce platforms. I specialize in custom theme and plugin development, secure payment integration, and performance optimization for high-traffic stores. Whether I’m leading full-stack work or collaborating with product and design teams, I focus on delivering maintainable code, robust security, and a great editor experience for content teams.

I thrive in fast-paced environments, translating complex requirements into reliable, scalable solutions. My approach combines hands-on development with clear documentation and proactive communication to ensure stakeholders stay aligned and projects ship on time.

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Experience Level

Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
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Language

English
Fluent

Work Experience

Senior Full Stack Engineer at Asana
June 1, 2024 - Present
Developed Asana Intelligence, an AI-powered task automation layer using GPT-4 and LangChain to auto-generate subtasks, summarize project threads, and recommend assignees, reducing manual task breakdown time by an estimated 30%. Architected a real-time notification streaming pipeline with WebSockets and Redis to deliver live updates to 10k+ concurrent users, enhancing perceived responsiveness. Integrated vector embeddings of project descriptions and historical tasks into a Pinecone index to enable semantic search and contextual AI suggestions within the UI. Built a React/TypeScript component library for AI-generated suggestion cards with A/B testing instrumentation to measure adoption. Collaborated with product and legal teams to implement GDPR-aligned data privacy controls for AI features, ensuring user content was not used for model training without explicit consent.
Full Stack Engineer at Stripe
December 1, 2020 - May 1, 2024
Led development of Stripe Workflow Builder, a Node.js/Fastify and React low-code tool enabling merchants to automate payment retries, fraud responses, and customer communications for 500+ enterprise customers. Integrated OpenAI Assistants API to power a conversational agent that helped merchants debug failed payments, reducing average ticket resolution time by 25%. Designed a WebRTC-based video verification prototype for high-risk onboarding, streaming encrypted identity documents and live selfie captures to compliance reviewers, decreasing fraud false positives by 15%. Built AWS-native infrastructure (Lambda, ECS Fargate, RDS Postgres, S3) with Terraform and GitHub Actions CI/CD, achieving 99.95% uptime for the workflow engine. Implemented Auth0 with fine-grained RBAC and JWT claims, ensuring SOC2 compliance for internal tools and external API access.
Software Engineer at Lyft
August 1, 2018 - December 1, 2020
Developed Lyft Video Support, an in-app WebRTC live video session for incident resolution between riders and safety agents, reducing average support call duration from 12 to 4 minutes. Built the React Native camera capture module and signaling server (Socket.io on Node.js), handling negotiation and adaptive bitrate for variable networks. Created a real-time driver-rider matching dashboard with Mapbox GL and Redis geospatial indexes, enabling ops to visualize and adjust ETAs during surge events. Migrated REST endpoints to GraphQL (Apollo Federation), reducing over-fetching and improving frontend load times. Mentored two junior engineers on WebRTC debugging and production monitoring with Datadog dashboards.
Software Engineer at Apple
April 1, 2017 - August 1, 2018
Contributed to iCloud Drive File Provider Extension with conflict resolution logic for real-time document sync across macOS and iOS. Built internal Node.js service for parsing and validating shared document metadata, reducing backend validation errors by 20%. Wrote Swift and Objective-C shims for cross-platform file change notifications; primarily focused on backend API development in Node.js and Java. Added unit and integration tests with Jest and XCTest, increasing test coverage for file coordination logic from 65% to 85%.
Associate Software Engineer at Workday
August 1, 2016 - April 1, 2017
Developed React components for employee onboarding checklists, integrating with Workday’s internal API gateway to display real-time task completion status. Wrote Node.js cron jobs that aggregated HR event data (new hires, promotions) and triggered email/Slack notifications to managers. Fixed 15+ critical UI bugs in the performance review module, improving customer-reported satisfaction scores for that feature by 10%.
Software Development Engineer at Amazon
July 1, 2015 - August 1, 2016
Built internal React dashboard for warehouse operations managers to visualize pick-and-pack efficiency metrics from DynamoDB. Implemented Java backend endpoints (Amazon’s internal framework) that calculated predicted shipment delays based on weather and traffic APIs. Collaborated with PMs to refactor the dashboard’s data fetching layer, reducing page load time from 3 seconds to under 500ms.
Software Engineering Intern at Amazon
June 1, 2014 - August 1, 2014
Assisted in migrating legacy Perl scripts to Java for inventory reconciliation, writing unit tests and updating documentation. Shadowed full-time engineers during on-call rotations and helped triage low-priority Sev3 tickets.
Senior Software Engineer at Asana
June 1, 2024 - Present
Developed HousingHub Marketplace on WordPress/WooCommerce for 500+ vendors, integrating bookings and memberships; customized checkout with Stripe Connect; built 10+ Gutenberg blocks with React/ACF; optimized queries with indexing and Redis caching; led cross-functional UX improvements for housing features with weekly sprints.
Senior WordPress Engineer at Stripe
December 1, 2020 - May 1, 2024
Architected RentPay, a white-labeled WooCommerce extension for rent payments with automated fees and recurring billing; extended REST API with webhooks to sync payments with Yardi/AppFolio handling 15,000+ monthly transactions; migrated legacy listings to WordPress with 80+ ACF fields; implemented CDN/image optimization boosting Lighthouse scores and traffic; documented architecture and provided post-launch support.
Full-Stack Engineer at Lyft
August 1, 2018 - December 1, 2020
Built Driver Gear Store, an internal WooCommerce marketplace; developed a driver rewards plugin integrated with internal APIs; customized WooCommerce Subscriptions for monthly deliveries; improved checkout conversion from 62% to 78%; ensured PCI compliance and implemented Stripe Payment Intents for SCA-ready transactions.
Junior Web Developer at Workday
August 1, 2016 - April 1, 2017
Supported internal WordPress intranet for HR documentation; built PHP/ACF templates for policy display; implemented JS form validation for benefits enrollment; assisted with plugin updates and MySQL backup automation across 12+ WordPress sites.
Associate Web Developer at Amazon
July 1, 2015 - August 1, 2016
Built internal PHP/MySQL dashboard for warehouse inventory with real-time stock via AJAX; customized open-source templates for internal swag store; documented troubleshooting procedures reducing recurring tickets by 30%.

Education

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science at California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo
January 1, 2011 - January 1, 2015
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science at California Polytechnic State University – San Luis Obispo
January 1, 2011 - January 1, 2015

Qualifications

Add your qualifications or awards here.

Industry Experience

Software & Internet, Real Estate & Construction, Retail