Independent / Senior / Accountable
Available for new projectsI'm Miguel — a senior freelance PHP, Drupal & WordPress developer and web architect. For 15+ years I've designed, built, and led the platforms that Fortune 500 companies and federal agencies run on. Now I do that work directly for you, through my own LLC, for one fixed price agreed before we start.
Platforms built for
Over 15+ years I have helped build, extend, migrate, and maintain websites for these organizations. Some of that work happened in-house — seven years at IBM building platforms for its Fortune 500 clients, and at SAP on concur.com. The rest came through contracts and direct client engagements, often alongside agency partners and internal digital teams. Brand names belong to their owners and appear here to describe my experience, not to imply endorsement.
01 The advantage
A good agency is worth its price on the right project. But a lot of what an agency quote pays for never touches your code — and you pay for it anyway. Here's the honest comparison, and why I price the project instead of the hour.
We define the scope together, I quote it, and that is the price. You approve it before development starts. If the scope genuinely changes, we talk about the impact first — you will never open an invoice you did not expect.
No account manager, no ticket queue, no game of telephone. Ask a technical question and get a technical answer from the person writing the code — usually the same day.
Bits for All LLC is a registered company with real contracts and real deliverables. You get the flexibility of working with an independent and the accountability of a business that intends to be here in five years.
One fixed price. Agreed before a line of code. Never hourly.
Hourly billing quietly rewards the slowest path to the finish. A fixed price puts that risk on me, which is where it belongs — my experience makes the work faster, and you keep the benefit instead of paying for the hours it would have taken someone else.
02 Find your starting point
A new website or custom application, built around how your business actually works. We turn your goals into a clear scope, a fixed price, and a platform you can grow into rather than out of.
Let's build it →03 Services
Build something new, improve what you have, or untangle what is holding you back. Senior PHP, Drupal, WordPress, and custom web application work — plus the architecture, migration, and project leadership that decides whether any of it lasts.
Before anyone writes code, someone has to decide the shape of the thing. I scope vague goals into buildable plans, design the technical approach, and lead the delivery — the role I held at IBM for seven years and carry into every engagement now.
Requirements discovery, technical scoping, fixed-price proposals, risk sequencing so the expensive unknowns surface in week one rather than week ten, and realistic timelines you can hold me to.
Architecture definition, code review and standards, leading developers, sprint planning and release management with PMs, and acting as the single technical point of contact for executives and stakeholders.
Need a custom web application, a faster backend, or an aging PHP site brought up to modern standards? I build new features, connect third-party services, clean up inherited code, and keep things stable under real traffic.
Not every project should be a CMS. When you need software that happens to live on the web — an internal tool, a customer portal, a dashboard, a business workflow that has outgrown its spreadsheet — I build it on a proper framework rather than bending Drupal or WordPress into a shape it was never meant to hold.
Laravel, Symfony, and CodeIgniter for applications with real domain logic: service layers, dependency injection, queues and background jobs, scheduled tasks, role-based access control, and a data model designed around your business rules instead of around a content type.
ReactJS components and hooks, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and Node tooling with Webpack or Gulp — used where an interface genuinely needs to be reactive, and deliberately not used where a server-rendered page would be faster to load and cheaper to maintain.
Internal tools, client and member portals, admin dashboards, reporting interfaces, quoting and approval workflows, and the integrations that stitch existing systems together. Authentication, permissions, audit trails, and reporting are treated as core requirements rather than as things to bolt on later.
15+ years with Drupal across every major version from 6 to 11. I have architected and delivered enterprise platforms for Fortune 500 companies, federal agencies, and non-profits — including migrating concur.com through Drupal 7, 9, and 10 across 21 portals at SAP.
Custom modules, complex data architecture (nodes, paragraphs, custom entities, pseudo-fields), REST API resources, custom routes and services with dependency injection, and complex migrations from Drupal 7, WordPress, and MongoDB using custom process plugins.
Interactive UI components and theming with preprocess functions, Twig templates, theme hooks and custom libraries. Responsive builds in CSS3/SASS and Tailwind. If it can be designed, it can be built.
Full content modelling, Views with relationships and contextual filters, Solr faceted search, media and AWS S3 storage, roles and permissions, config import/export, and Composer/Drush workflows — configured so your team owns the day-to-day without calling a developer.
From a single plugin to enterprise WordPress platforms — I have been building with WordPress since the 2.x days, front-end and back-end, across everything the platform offers.
Complex custom plugins, custom post types and fields, Gutenberg blocks, custom shortcodes, REST/SOAP integrations, AJAX endpoints, data sync from external services, cron jobs, custom MySQL queries, roles and permissions, third-party PHP libraries, and security hardening.
Mobile-responsive theming, child themes, custom templates and walker classes for menus, jQuery plugin integration, ReactJS UI components, Blade templating, and complex CSS3/SASS layouts.
Migrations are where projects quietly go wrong, and they are a large part of what I get hired to do. I have moved concur.com through Drupal 7, 9, and 10 across 21 portals at SAP, migrated the U.S. Department of Energy from Drupal 7 to 8, and pulled content out of WordPress, MongoDB, and legacy databases into modern Drupal.
Drupal 6 through 11, WordPress, MongoDB, legacy MySQL and SQL databases, CSV and XML feeds, and undocumented systems where the real schema has to be reverse-engineered before anything can safely move.
Custom migrate source and process plugins, field-level transformation and content model mapping, media and file migration, taxonomy remapping, and URL and redirect preservation — so the search equity you spent years building does not evaporate on launch day.
Dry runs against production-sized data, rollback-safe and incremental runs, reconciliation reports that prove record counts and relationships actually match, and a rehearsed cutover plan with a realistic content-freeze window. A good go-live is a boring one.
Your site does not live in isolation — it has to talk to the rest of your business. I connect Drupal and WordPress to Salesforce, AWS S3, payment gateways, CRMs, and any REST or SOAP service you depend on. Authentication, error handling, data mapping, and compliance are handled end to end, built to stay resilient when the other side misbehaves.
The front end is where your users actually meet the product, and it fails in ways a screenshot never shows: a layout that shifts while it loads, a bundle that grows every sprint, a form nobody can complete with a keyboard. I treat it as engineering — architected, measured, and held to a standard — rather than as the last step of a design file.
Component systems and design-system implementation rather than one-off pages. Modular CSS and SASS architecture with clear naming and ownership, theming that survives a rebrand, predictable state handling, and cross-browser and cross-device behaviour that is verified rather than assumed.
Core Web Vitals treated as a budget agreed up front, not a report after launch: bundle splitting and lazy loading, critical CSS, disciplined image and font strategy, eliminating render-blocking work, and measuring on real hardware instead of a developer laptop on fibre.
Semantic HTML first and ARIA only where it earns its place. Keyboard paths, focus management, contrast, and screen-reader behaviour tested against WCAG AA and Section 508 — the standard federal and enterprise work gets formally reviewed against. Interfaces degrade gracefully instead of going blank when a script fails.
Node.js workflows with NPM or Yarn, Webpack bundling and code splitting, PostCSS, Tailwind CSS, and Gulp pipelines for compilation, linting, and live reload — plus source maps and automated checks, so the next developer inherits a build they can actually run.
04 Architecture & leadership
Fifteen years in, the decisions that determine whether a platform survives are rarely about typing code. They are about what gets built, in what order, and how the pieces fit. That is the role I held at IBM, SAP, and the Department of Energy — and it comes with the build here.
The decisions made before the first module is written are the expensive ones to reverse. I make them deliberately, write them down, and explain them in language your stakeholders can actually sign off on.
I have led development teams and been the single technical point of contact between engineers and the people signing off. On your project that means fewer meetings, no translation layer, and status reports you can believe.
Working with Drupal, WordPress, and the PHP/LAMP stack
High-profile clients, worldwide brands, and the agencies that build for them
Long-term relationships — clients and teams that keep me for years, not one project
SAP, IBM, Cigna, NASA, FedEx, U.S. Dept. of Energy, and more
05 Portfolio
Every website in my portfolio — 40 in all. Websites I have collaborated on across enterprise, government, and growing businesses, as developer, lead, or architect. Some I built end to end; on others I worked alongside in-house teams and agency partners.
southlandind.com
Drupal
Southland Industries
MEP engineering, construction, and service firm delivering optimized building systems across commercial, data center, federal, and healthcare markets.
anl.gov
Drupal 9
Argonne National Laboratory
U.S. Department of Energy multidisciplinary science and engineering research center driving discoveries in energy, materials, and computing.
evernorth.com
Drupal 9
Evernorth Health Services
Pharmacy, care, and benefit services tackling healthcare cost, access, and member outcomes at scale.
gao.gov
Drupal 8
U.S. Government Accountability Office
Independent congressional watchdog auditing federal programs and delivering nonpartisan analysis to Congress.
ageofempires.com
WordPress
Age of Empires
Official site of the Age of Empires franchise from World's Edge Studio, spanning the full game catalog.
mymatrixx.com
Drupal 9
MyMatrixx by Evernorth
Pharmacy benefit manager delivering pharmacy solutions purpose-built for workers' compensation programs.
archives.gov
Drupal 7
U.S. National Archives
The nation's recordkeeper — preserving the documents, photos, and records that tell America's story.
basc.pnnl.gov
Drupal 8
Building America Solution Center
Expert guidance, tools, and resources for high-performance home construction and renovation, from PNNL.
keepsamoving.com
WordPress
Keep SA Moving
VIA Metropolitan Transit's voter-approved initiative improving mobility and connectivity across San Antonio.
hopenergy.com
WordPress
HOP Energy
90-year-old Northeastern energy provider delivering heating oil, propane, and HVAC services across eight states.
my.cq-partners.com
Drupal
MyCQ Portal
Web portal serving CQ Partners internal clients.
nationsroof.com
WordPress
Nations Roof
Nationwide commercial roofing company with 40+ branches handling replacement, repair, maintenance, and emergency work.
meta-pd.com
WordPress
META Planning + Design
Land planning and design firm offering master planning, site planning, entitlements, and architectural review.
uscourts.cavc.gov
Static
U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims
Official portal for the federal court reviewing appeals of veterans' benefits decisions.
Websites I contributed to earlier in my career. Many have since been rebuilt, redesigned, or retired by other teams, so they are listed for the record rather than as live examples of current work.
06 On AI
AI is genuinely good at the tedious parts of this job. The parts that decide whether a platform succeeds still come down to experience — the kind behind every site in the portfolio above.
What experience buysAI will hand you five solutions that all work today. Knowing which one you can still maintain in year three comes from having lived with the consequences — seven years defining Drupal and WordPress architecture at IBM for FedEx, Best Buy, NASA, and NBCUniversal.
What real projects look likeMost work is not a blank page. It is a platform built by several teams, patched under deadline, with the real constraints living in a stakeholder's head. Moving concur.com through Drupal 7, 9, and 10 across 21 portals at SAP was mostly reading what was already there and knowing what was safe to touch.
What gets reviewedGenerated code is confidently insecure. Federal and enterprise platforms like gao.gov, archives.gov, and anl.gov are held to OWASP, WCAG, and Section 508 by people whose job is finding what you missed. I build for that review from the first commit.
What you are actually hiringScoping, architecture, build, QA, deployment, and handoff — plus a signed contract with Bits for All LLC. A model cannot carry liability or answer the phone when a migration goes sideways on a Friday night. I can.
Here is exactly how it fits into my work.
The result: the speed of modern tools, fifteen years of judgement, and one person accountable for every decision.
07 Process
No discovery fees, no mystery, no month three surprise. You always know where your project stands and what it costs.
What you are trying to achieve, what you already have, and what is in the way. No sales script and no charge for talking it through.
I turn that into a written scope with one fixed price. You see exactly what is included — and what is not — before you commit to anything.
Focused increments, regular check-ins, and a working URL you can look at. You watch it come together instead of waiting for a reveal.
QA, deployment, and documentation written by the person who made the decisions. Your team can own it from day one — and I am still reachable.
08 The person behind the work
I'm a senior PHP engineer and web architect with 15+ years building platforms for Fortune 500 companies, federal agencies, and small businesses that cannot afford to get it wrong.
Everything runs through my own company, Bits for All LLC. In practice that means the person you meet on the first call is the person who scopes the work, designs the architecture, writes the code, tests it, deploys it — and still picks up the phone two years later. I keep the client list short on purpose, because that is the only way the direct access I am promising you is actually real.
Before going independent I spent seven years at IBM as a lead LAMP developer and architect, then moved through the Department of Energy, Cigna/Evernorth, and SAP — so I have seen how large organisations build software, including the parts worth copying and the parts worth avoiding. Based on Whidbey Island in Langley, Washington; working with clients anywhere.
09 Track record
Fifteen years of senior and lead roles — the background that makes a fixed price possible, because I have usually solved a version of your problem before.
Feb 2022 – Present
SAP
Maintained and migrated concur.com through Drupal 7, 9, and 10 — 21 portals serving millions of users. Built custom Drupal modules, interactive UI components, REST API implementations, and complex data migrations. Handled complex site configuration and architecture with paragraphs and custom modules, deployments on Acquia cloud infrastructure, and sprint planning, technical scoping, and release management with PMs.
Nov 2020 – Feb 2022
Cigna / Evernorth Care Group (Contract)
Full-stack Drupal 9 development for evernorth.com. Architected and implemented AWS S3 integration via the s3fs module for media storage and backups. Authored custom PHP modules, reviewed team pull requests, and contributed reusable Drupal and WordPress components across the platform.
Jun 2020 – Nov 2020
Crescere Digital
Led PHP development for real-estate platforms — custom WordPress plugins, Drupal modules, and third-party API integrations. Performed data migrations using Feeds, and worked directly with executives and VPs to define timelines and technical scope.
Feb 2020 – Jun 2020
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory · U.S. Dept. of Energy
Drupal 7 to 8 migration and full-stack development for the U.S. Department of Energy. Built custom modules, managed CI/CD pipelines with Jenkins and Docker, and handled cloud deployments on AWS.
Oct 2012 – Jan 2020
IBM
Seven years as lead full-stack LAMP developer building enterprise platforms for Fortune 500 clients: FedEx, Best Buy, NBCUniversal, NASA, Kohl's, Heineken, Texas Instruments, and Claire's. Defined overall web architecture in Drupal 6–8 and WordPress, led development teams across full project lifecycles, oversaw code quality and deployment pipelines, and served as the primary technical point of contact for internal teams and external stakeholders.
PrivateFortune 500 & Enterprise
GovernmentFederal & State Agencies
Non-ProfitArts & Culture
10 Under the hood
Chosen per project for what it needs to do in five years, not for what is fashionable this quarter.
11 Before we start
Still wondering something that is not here? Ask me directly — the form is right below.
New builds, complex data migrations, custom features, API integrations, performance and security work, and rescuing sites that have stopped behaving. Mostly PHP, Drupal, and WordPress — plus custom web applications on Laravel, Symfony, or CodeIgniter when a CMS is the wrong tool for the job. Scope runs from a single well-defined feature to a full platform with an architecture phase in front of it.
We talk through your goals, I review what you already have, and then I write you a scope with one fixed price attached. You approve that before any development starts. If the scope genuinely changes mid-project, we discuss the impact together and agree on it before anything gets built — so there is no hourly meter running and no surprise invoice at the end.
Use it — I do, every day, and the time it saves goes into your fixed price rather than my invoice. What AI cannot do is own the outcome: choose the architecture you will still be able to maintain in year three, untangle years of undocumented decisions in a platform several teams have already touched, find the compliance constraint that only exists in a stakeholder's head, or be accountable when something breaks on a Friday night. That judgement and that accountability are what you are actually hiring.
Directly with me, the whole way through. I scope it, architect it, build it, test it, and deploy it. There is no account manager relaying your questions and no junior developer learning on your budget.
Yes, and a good share of my work is exactly that — including older Drupal and WordPress platforms with no documentation. We start with an honest assessment of what you have, then agree on what to fix first.
Both. Defining architecture, scoping work, and leading delivery is a large part of what I was hired for at IBM, SAP, and the Department of Energy. If your project needs the plan before it needs the code, that is where we start.
Yes. I am based in Langley, Washington and work remotely with clients anywhere. We agree on communication and review times that fit your team and timezone.
You get documentation written by the person who made the decisions, a clean handoff, and code your team can own. If you would rather I stay involved for ongoing improvements and maintenance, we can arrange that too.
12 Your next move
Tell me what you are building, what is broken, or what you are not sure about yet. You will get a real reply from me — not a form letter — within one business day.