Email: [email protected]
Address: 28035 Winona Lane, Lewes, DE, 19958
Phone: (203) 249-3599
Website: www.onerutter.com
<aside> <img src="/icons/bookmark_gray.svg" alt="/icons/bookmark_gray.svg" width="40px" /> I am a seasoned digital technology leader with over two decades of experience in digital marketing and e-commerce. Passionate about both people and technology, Jake has honed his skills through various roles, demonstrating a keen interest in experimentation and analytics. With a robust front-end engineering and user experience foundation, I have held pivotal positions, including Director of Global Front End Engineering and VP of Digital User Experience.
Throughout my career, I have excelled at leading cross-functional teams, specializing in migrating platforms, implementing new architectures, and optimizing Agile SDLC processes. My expertise particularly shines in eCommerce DTC websites, where I have fostered strategic partnerships that have led to the seamless delivery of exceptional user experiences.
My track record speaks volumes about my ability to drive growth and development within engineering teams. I have consistently elevated team performance through effective coaching and talent acquisition strategies. Noteworthy accomplishments include successful project executions, design system implementations, and web performance optimizations.
My educational background in Visual Communications and Web Design complements my professional experience, further enriching my skill set. I am seeking opportunities to leverage my expertise in digital technology leadership to foster innovation and drive industry advancement.
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Director, Global Front-End Engineering, eCommerce at VF Corporation (2022 - Present)
- Leading a department of 22 front-end engineers across North America and Europe for eCommerce DTC websites of brands like The North Face, Vans, Timberland, and Dickies and established cohesive team culture by relocating dispersed engineers and effectively managing remote work dynamics.
- Forged strategic partnerships with support, product, architecture, design, and QA teams to ensure seamless delivery of eCommerce experience.
- Participated in optimizing Agile Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) processes, utilizing SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) practices to enhance team efficiency, collaboration, and delivery speed. This resulted in streamlined workflows and improved project outcomes.
VP, Global Front End Engineering, (2021 - 2022)
- Played the role of Product lead to understand business requirements and build delivery roadmaps with C-level executives and board members across three markets (US, UK, AU) utilizing my teams to implement solutions through my team of 15 engineers.
- Established a framework for developer collaboration and application development, encompassing a geographically dispersed team of engineers across four key regions: India, the UK, Australia, and the US. This was achieved by creating and continuously maintaining comprehensive guidelines, standards, and unified development processes.
- Designed and implemented a new front-end architecture that transitioned from a monolithic JSP stack to a NextJS stack, reducing developer workflow friction and enabling the support of 20+ white-label websites from a single codebase.
- Brought in tooling to support brands to author their own content utilizing Contentful, a headless CMS. Acted as lead to negotiate a multi-year and multi-region contract to expand and upgrade our capabilities.
- Actively participated in US and group IT leadership, providing guidance on technical solutions to support marketing, operations, and compliance challenges and opportunities. Built relationships with key stakeholders and advocated for the needs of the engineering team.
VP, Digital User Experience, (2020 - 2022)
- Hired, managed, and mentored a cross-functional team of 16, including digital design, front-end development, QA, and analytics in the CT and Chennai, India offices. Effectively orchestrated operations across multiple office locations in CT and Chennai, India, fostering a cohesive and collaborative work environment.
- I led the implementation of the design system, enhancing consistency and reusability in the codebase. This fortified our infrastructure, boosting developer productivity and speeding up feature deployment. Leveraging the design system, my team delivered a ReactJS-based multi-step checkout with REST APIs, resulting in a significant 9% YoY increase in conversions.
- Implemented a web optimization team focused on driving incremental revenue through our website properties. Moved from Optimizely to AB tasty. Supported team in building out experiments, utilized feature flagging capabilities to launch features incrementally.
- Implemented web performance strategy at the global level across 20+ websites partnering with Speedcurve to build reports and budgets and utilizing Akamai to implement changes to improve FCP, LCP, and Start Render.
- Sourced and partnered with a digital agency (Netguru) to accelerate two projects: a dashboard showcasing wine club subscribers and a new homepage designed to guide customers on the best ways to shop built with ReactJS.
- Led front-end tool integration by sourcing, evaluating, and adopting solutions. Conducted research and POCs, demonstrating cost reduction, efficiency, and codebase sustainability. Successfully introduced pivotal tools such as Contentful (a headless CMS for content management), AudioEye (an accessibility tool to achieve AA compliance for US websites), and Unbounce (an impactful marketing-focused landing page optimization tool).
Director, Digital Technology, (2013 - 2020)
- Streamlined departmental efficiency by introducing new tools, processes, and iterative delivery mechanisms to increase the velocity of releases by 66% and driving updated faster to support marketing goals to drive revenue.
- Driven by increased pressure on digital e-commerce initiatives, I presented a strategy to leadership that increased my team by 140% to 12 designers and developers to support the increased workload after launching four additional websites.
- Championed digital transformation project to implement REST APIs to allow front-end teams to launch and test new features and improvements faster using client-side technologies such as AngularJS.
- Pioneered strategy for designing and building mobile apps available in US and UK app stores using the Appcelerator Hybrid JavaScript framework, working with different stakeholders and building on the team's existing knowledge of JavaScript.
- Collaborated with US CEO and Group IT CIO to implement eCommerce Strategy for two markets (US and AU) with digital initiatives such as personalization, mobile strategy, website optimization, and a/b testing to improve conversion.
- Designed and implemented a Data Layer strategy on the front end across 12 websites to integrate with 3rd party platforms that enabled Marketing teams to analyze the success of their campaigns accurately.
Director, Digital Technology, (2010 - 2013)
- Recruited, hired, and managed a team of five (two senior web designers, two junior web designers, and one front-end developer) to design, build, and maintain four white-label eCommerce websites.
- Spearheaded architectural decisions for Front-end on Oracle ATG eCommerce platform, working alongside other front-end teams based in UK and AU offices.
- Led mobile website strategy to manage, design, and build 8 mobile websites for US (4 sites), AU (3 sites), and HK (1 site) markets utilizing Mobify Adaptive solution and managing vendor relationships.
- Designed and built front-end architecture for internal customer service applications to be used by customer service agents in all markets (US, UK, and AU) to reuse web components across internal and customer-facing apps.
- Maximized quality of projects delivered by building an internal QA team to team to implement automated and manual release testing.
Senior Web Designer and Developer, (2009 - 2010)
- Implemented a new front-end to support the migration of four eCommerce websites from a .Net legacy platform to a Java-based ATG eCommerce platform partnering with Infosys, an India-based implementation partner.
- Improved marketing request process efficiency between marketing and web teams by setting up and managing a customized project management tool, fogbugz.com.
- Supported Marketing, Ops, and Legal stakeholders to design and build white-label websites to support the overall roadmap.
Senior Web Designer and Developer, (2008 - 2009)
- Recruited to redesign web applications and continually improve user interface using JavaScript, CSS, XHTML, and XSLT.
- Setup and administration of social media marketing campaigns to increase awareness of the product.
- Analyzing current traffic data through Google Analytics and finding ways to increase natural search listings.