I’m a self-motivated technical architect with a strong focus on how systems are designed, not just how they’re delivered. I enjoy solving complex problems and building considered, long-term solutions that balance technical quality, scalability, and real-world constraints. With over 14 years’ experience working with PHP and Drupal, I bring deep platform knowledge alongside a strong appreciation for modern PHP ecosystems, including Laravel and Symfony. I value clean architecture, reuse, and sustainable engineering practices that continue to deliver value well beyond initial delivery.

Zach Bimson

I’m a self-motivated technical architect with a strong focus on how systems are designed, not just how they’re delivered. I enjoy solving complex problems and building considered, long-term solutions that balance technical quality, scalability, and real-world constraints. With over 14 years’ experience working with PHP and Drupal, I bring deep platform knowledge alongside a strong appreciation for modern PHP ecosystems, including Laravel and Symfony. I value clean architecture, reuse, and sustainable engineering practices that continue to deliver value well beyond initial delivery.

Available to hire

I’m a self-motivated technical architect with a strong focus on how systems are designed, not just how they’re delivered. I enjoy solving complex problems and building considered, long-term solutions that balance technical quality, scalability, and real-world constraints.

With over 14 years’ experience working with PHP and Drupal, I bring deep platform knowledge alongside a strong appreciation for modern PHP ecosystems, including Laravel and Symfony. I value clean architecture, reuse, and sustainable engineering practices that continue to deliver value well beyond initial delivery.

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Experience Level

Expert
Expert
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Expert
Expert
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Intermediate
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Language

English
Fluent

Work Experience

Contract Technical Architect / Drupal Developer at Cambridge University Press & Assessment
January 1, 2025 - Present
Engaged to support the later stages of a migration from a legacy platform to Drupal, focusing on platform stability, performance, and architectural conformity. Reviewed and optimised the Drupal platform for scalability and resilience, addressing performance bottlenecks and ensuring alignment with agreed architectural standards and best practices. Provided technical guidance to stabilise the platform ahead of further functional change. Subsequently led the migration away from a legacy payment provider, working within the constraints of a shared checkout experience implemented in React. Designed and implemented a Node.js API layer to expose product data in a clean, decoupled manner, enabling the Drupal platform and React checkout to evolve independently while reducing coupling to legacy systems.
Contract Technical Architect / Laravel Developer at Propel Finance
July 1, 2024 - December 31, 2024
Provided technical direction for Laravel platforms at Propel, focusing on stability, scalability, and retention through third-party integrations. Improved unit test coverage, development processes, and environment consistency to increase release confidence and platform resilience.
Contract Technical Architect / Drupal Developer at cti digital
March 1, 2023 - June 30, 2024
Engaged by CTI to lead the migration of a complex legacy platform inherited from a third party. Worked directly with the end client to define and deliver a phased transition away from Drupal 7, reducing platform risk while maintaining business continuity. Designed and delivered a greenfield Drupal solution for a large luxury hotel group with deep integrations into Opera Property Management Systems (PMS). Architected a bespoke booking and payment flow, supporting complex reservation logic and third-party payment gateways. Led a full-scale data migration of 250,000+ customer records and re-architected legacy PMS integrations behind a RESTful API layer, enabling phased delivery ahead of a scheduled Opera upgrade and ensuring long-term integration flexibility.
Contract Technical Architect at Agilisys
July 1, 2021 - July 31, 2022
Following the successful handover of day-to-day project delivery, transitioned into a strategic role focused on technical architecture, cross-team alignment, and delivery governance. Worked closely with Business Analysts and Project Managers to establish leaner, more scalable approaches to planning, estimation, and delivery across multiple teams. From a technical perspective, drove the adoption of reusable architectures, shared APIs, and modular Drupal components designed to retain value across clients and projects. Established and enforced engineering standards including automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, and clearly defined technical contracts between teams, enabling controlled change, reduced delivery risk, and improved long-term maintainability.
Contract Drupal Developer at Agilisys
July 1, 2020 - July 31, 2021
Joined Agilisys to support tactical COVID-19 solutions designed to help States of Guernsey manage economic aid to businesses on the island during the pandemic. My focus then shifted to building and maintaining a platform (traveltracker.gov.gg) to track travel, assess risk, and manage designations, along with COVID test submission workflows. Led design and development of reusable PHP libraries to handle integration with systems such as Dynamics 365 CRM. Coordinated and facilitated a new development workflow to improve collaboration and reusability by implementing industry-standard practices like CI/CD and semantic versioning.
Drupal Developer at HighWire Press, Inc.
October 1, 2019 - March 31, 2020
Focused on their Drupal 8 publishing platform. Worked remotely with a distributed US team to improve test coverage and CI across multiple repositories, restructured and standardised D8 sites, created a custom composer-project-based platform installer, prepared modules for D9, and implemented a SemVer-based release and deployment process.
Contract Drupal/ PHP Developer at Unipro Ltd
July 1, 2017 - September 30, 2019
Helped Specsavers decouple from a monolithic Drupal 7 architecture using REST APIs, Symfony and various PWA/SPA applications. Implemented industry best practices across teams, adapting and improving development and code release workflows, implementing CI/CD and broadening test coverage across Drupal and Symfony applications.
Contract Drupal Developer at Comic Relief
February 1, 2016 - June 30, 2017
Co-architected and built an installation profile in Drupal 8 focused on editorial experience to create a reusable website platform, saving time and money across campaigns.
Contract Drupal Developer at Save the Children UK
November 1, 2015 - February 29, 2016
Security auditing and patching for the range of products supported while preparing for a re-platform. Worked across Zend, Drupal, CodeIgniter and a range of custom solutions.
Contract Drupal Developer at Comic Relief
August 1, 2015 - November 30, 2015
Maintaining, updating and releasing the back-end of the 2016 Sports Relief campaign site; collaborated on site direction and architecture; created ctools plugins, updated community modules and wrote custom modules where necessary.
Contract Drupal Developer at IT7
November 1, 2014 - June 30, 2015
Rebuilding a Drupal 6 site in Drupal 7 for a large French charity.
Contract Drupal Developer at Precedent
May 1, 2014 - October 31, 2014
Staying on as contractor to help meet deadlines; Drupal development work to extend existing capabilities.
Drupal Developer at Precedent
November 1, 2011 - May 31, 2014
Drupal/PHP development including custom module development and extension of Drupal core functionality.
Developer at SubSonic Web Development
January 1, 2008 - December 31, 2011
Creating low-budget web solutions for local people and businesses, ensuring accessible and scalable sites.

Education

HND, Software Development at Chichester College
January 1, 2007 - January 1, 2011
High School at Worthing High School
January 1, 2003 - January 1, 2007

Qualifications

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Industry Experience

Software & Internet, Professional Services, Education, Media & Entertainment