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jomurgel

Jo Murgel

Senior Lead Full-Stack Engineer · Software Architect

hello@jomurgel.com · 208-867-4554 · jomurgel.com · linkedin.com/in/jomurgel

Summary

Full-stack engineer and architect with 18 years building for the web — frontend to principal to leading teams. I do my best work on the ambiguous stuff: finding the real problem, designing the system, setting the standards, and getting a team pointed the same direction. I make things faster, both the sites I build and the teams that build them, and I bring people along while I do it — mentoring engineers and raising the bar without crushing morale. I trained as an artist before I wrote a line of code, which is why I care about design and developer experience as much as what ships. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to anything, so I can’t help but to build the custom one.

Experience

Rehab Media Group — Senior Lead Full-Stack Engineer

July 2025 – Present

  • Sole engineer and technical owner of Rehab.com’s partner dashboard (React, MongoDB, Redis, Firebase), where rehab centers manage and monitor their listings.
  • Inherited a high-debt codebase left by three prior engineers and rebuilt the core systematically — new component library, clearer data-health visibility, redesigned user flows — clearing a heavy backlog down to minimal maintenance in under three months.
  • Defined requirements directly with product, sales, and leadership and built a premium subscription platform end-to-end, including its long-term maintenance strategy.
  • Established organization-wide coding standards and a full documentation suite where none existed, cutting onboarding friction and improving consistency across agency and owned-brand work.
  • Leading a replatforming effort using Claude, n8n, and automation workflows to improve adoption and retention and take operational load off sales and support.
  • Results: +39% application performance, +500% search performance, backlog to a sparse maintenance queue in under three months.

PMC (Penske Media) — Principal Software Engineer, Tech Lead

March 2022 – August 2024

  • Designed and built a JSON-based configuration framework that unified Block Editor features across the company’s enterprise media brands — Rolling Stone, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline — growing from 11 brands to 13 over my tenure and consolidating brand-specific work into one maintainable system. WordPress VIP took interest in it for potential platform adoption.
  • Set engineering standards across a 60+ person organization — linting, code review, documentation requirements, and hands-on HTML5 and accessibility training — the groundwork for 100% WCAG 2.1 AA compliance across every brand.
  • Led teams of 2–8, splitting time roughly 60% coding and 40% architecture, code review, and stakeholder work.
  • Mentored an engineer who has since grown into a strong, independent developer — gave him the tools to ask the right questions and the confidence to back himself. Prouder of that than most of the code.
  • Worked directly with editorial teams to find and fix workflow friction through behavioral analysis and iteration.
  • Results: cut editorial time-to-publish ~43% (measured pre/post in the CMS) and reached 100% WCAG 2.1 AA compliance across brands; meaningfully reduced post-launch usability issues and user drop-off; maintained features on a revenue platform serving 5,000+ sites globally.

Alley — Principal User Experience Developer

September 2019 – March 2022

  • Built accessible, headless data-visualization sites for grant-giving foundations and policy organizations — Kaiser Family Foundation, Brookings Institution, Kauffman Foundation — spending 80–90% of my time in Next.js and the WordPress Block Editor.
  • Designed custom chart and graph components that turned dense research PDFs into state-specific data people could actually navigate.
  • Built editor blocks that closely mirrored their frontend appearance, cutting content-creation friction for clients.
  • Results: +50% task completion via UX audits, +23% mobile conversion; UX frameworks adopted across the development team.

WebDevStudios — Senior Front-End Engineer & Designer

September 2016 – March 2019

  • Senior developer at a WordPress agency serving ecommerce, enterprise, and general web clients in a speed-first environment.
  • Pushed semantic HTML5, accessibility, and WCAG into a codebase where speed usually won; ran learning sessions on mobile-first and user-centered practices for the team.
  • Contributed to early Block Editor (Gutenberg) standards in 2018 that stayed in use for years.
  • Results: brought a speed-first codebase up to consistent accessibility and semantic standards across client projects.

Independent Consultant & Freelance

2007 – Present

  • Digital experience audits, accessibility and Section 508 compliance reviews, and process work for 65+ organizations; site builds on WordPress, Next.js, and custom stacks plus brand identity and SEO/performance audits.
  • Built a functional-prototype-first workflow that earns far higher client acceptance than traditional static design rounds.

Earlier

Mighty Engine — Chief Web Developer & Designer, then contractor (2014–2019): led the company’s rebranding and set its development standards. Full history available on request.

Skills

Languages & frameworks: JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Next.js, Node, PHP, HTML5, CSS/Sass Platforms & CMS: WordPress (incl. VIP), Block Editor/Gutenberg, headless Data: PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MySQL, Redis Infra & tooling: AWS, Docker, Git/GitHub, Figma, Storybook, n8n Practice: Software architecture, design systems, accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA), performance optimization, team leadership & mentoring, engineering standards & documentation

User of the em dash: a hill I will die on.

Education

BFA, Graphic Design & Illustration (minor, Photography) — Boise State University, Cum Laude