Aaron Steffy Couch

Technical Leader

15+ years creating online experiences, developing products, and leading engineering teams.

See my work picture of me, balding white dude

Work

I have over 15 years creating digital experiences, successful products, and leading teams. See my resume for details.

Management

I have managed over a dozen developers and system administrators at several organizations. I enjoy helping developers flourish and succeed through implementing professional development paths, training, mentorship, and creating the right environments for high performing teams.

Product

I created and was the Product Owner of DKAN, an Open Data Catalog. DKAN logo DKAN has been adopted by over 100 governments in 35 countries.

I created and was the Product Owner of Provus, a Drupal distribution focused on creating outstanding web experiences for county and local government and higher education. Provus has been used to build over a dozen sites including Orange County and SIU Medical School. Provus was recently awarded Pantheon's 2021 Innovation Award.

Open Source Development

I have contributed to dozens of Open Source projects in languages such as Javascript, PHP, Python, and Ruby. I am a Drupal core contributor in versions 7, 8, and 9.

Speaking

I have given over a dozen talks at technical conferences. Recent examples include:

Publications

PrometSource.com

Miscellaneous

  • Published dozens of techinical and marketing blog posts
  • Published on the editorial pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Metro, and other outlets.

Open Data

I have been an architect and lead developer for open data catalogs for 6 years on behalf of federal, state and city level agencies.

Hire me

I am currently available as a contractor, at 30 hours a week. See below for what I can offer. Contact me for more information.

Technical Project Leadership

I can take a project and a team of developers and deliver on time. I have years of experience from initial project planning; to estimations, discovery workshops, requirements gathering; through sprint cycles; and finally to training and project launch. I have years of experience leading development teams, engaging with clients, and project management.

Backend Development

I have years of experience building CMS-based (Drupal, Wordpress, Gatsby, Django) solutions as well as API-driven backends (Node.js, Python, PHP).

Front-End Development

I have built numerous front-end interfaces using React, Angular, and data visualization libraries like D3. I have expertise in Drupal and Wordpress theming as well as webpack, CSS processors, and other front-end tools. I have built and contributed a to front-end libraries and themes. I recently gave a talk at DrupalGovCon titled Component-Driven Theming with Storybook.

Solutions Architecture

Sales, Estimations, and Project Planning

I have experience in gathering requirements from RFPs or client interviews, creating budgets, negotiating scope, managing realistic timelines and assembling implemenation teams.

Systems Architecture

I have experience creating bespoke Linux server clusters using tools like Ansible and Chef as well as creating and managing systems in AWS using tools like CloudFormation, ELB, Autoscale, Lambda, SQS, SNS and more. I have also setup numerous CLI instances using Jenkins and Saas tools like CircleCI and TravisCI.

Product Development

I have created and served as a Product Owner two products. I'm especially capable at looking at the technical landscape and pairig that with the sales and market opportunities to craft a successful path for product work.

Family

photo of rebecca and aaron at the beach I live with my wife Rebecca and our daughter in Roxborough, Philadelphia.