Riaan Pietersen

Background

About Riaan Pietersen

In 2004, I co-founded a design and development agency called Weekday Heroes with a former colleague. As Co-founder and Technical Director, and later Managing Director, I was responsible for establishing processes, ensuring timely completion of work, sales, hosting client workshops, and creating technical documentation. I also wrote code for client work during this time. This period was particularly formative as I gained in-depth, hands-on experience with the software development lifecycle and balancing client budgets and requirements. As the Head of Software Development, I manage a team, handle cost estimations, prepare scope of work documents, participate in client and sales meetings, and report to the CTO. I am also responsible for IT tasks within the company, setting standards for the development department, and serving on the EXCO team. My work involves balancing management duties with active Umbraco development. I integrate front-end components into Umbraco, set up Doctypes, use uSkinned, and perform custom WordPress development in PHP as well. Throughout my career, I have continuously expanded my skill set. On the front-end, I am proficient in HTML, SCSS, JavaScript, JSON, and XML. My back-end expertise includes PHP, WordPress CMS, C#, and Razor within the Umbraco back-end. I have also worked with various devops tools such as Git, Azure Devops, CPanel, IIS, and Windows Server. Additionally, I have experience with SaaS systems like Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, Hubspot, SharpSpring, SendGrid, and Jenkins. Over time, I have adapted to significant industry changes, such as the shift from Flash to JavaScript, the rise of modern CMS options, no-code marketing solutions and the increasing importance of tools like GIT, NPM, and AI.