Handshake
2 years co-building a premium corporate marketing site with 100k+ monthly traffic
- Client
- Handshake
- Design
- Handshake Design Team
Handshake is a FAST growing multi-million-dollar tech company focused on improving equity in career opportunities for students. When we first met, they needed a from-scratch rebuild of their marketing site for an imminent rebranding announcement–and they needed it fast.
Love at first site
This project required a skilled developer–but also a strategic thinker. They needed a project managerial mind who could take ownership of the situation, manage laterally, self-unblock, and navigate the diverse needs of multiple stakeholders across four departments. In short, they needed someone who could tame the beautiful, dynamic chaos of a fast growing startup into a successful launch–on a deadline. I came recommended as a pinch hitter who could wear all the hats needed to get the job done.
Despite a harrowing timeline, our first launches saw double digit improvements in conversions. It was so successful that I stayed at Handshake as a contractor for two years, co-owning the development of joinhandshake.com on a two-person dev team.
While I ultimately decided to part ways and more deeply pursue creative tech freelancing, this experience taught me how to go above and beyond serving a fast-paced, complex corporate team at scale.
All the hats
Working with several teams of designers and strategists, I built dozens of pages & microsites, shepherded rebrands (full and partial), and even coached some design contractors new to web design on best practices. When I saw the business needs were changing, I proposed and spearheaded a site-wide full stack tech migration to reduce costs, increase development speed, and create a better experience for content managers. I helped build Algolia search experiences, Marketo integrations, animated data visualizations, and even a user-facing interactive image editor.
A senior in a growing dev team
As a larger marketing dev team began to form toward the end of my tenure, new dev leadership trusted me with senior tasks. I owned our tooling/ops, conducted technical intervews, delegated and reviewed junior contributions, coached our team on new tech & best practices, built in-house libraries, and even added an e2e/visual regression testing workflow by my own initiative to help the team manage a rapidly scaling marketing site.