I’m Gabriel Somoza, a Belgium-based Engineering Manager and Ecommerce Architect. I currently spend most of my time leading Strategery – a boutique web development company that specializes in building high-quality e-commerce stores and web applications.
I’m a Zend Certified Engineer and Magento Certified Developer Plus, founder and organizer of the monthly PHP Limburg meetup, regular speaker at PHP conferences and meetups around Europe, and contributor to several open-source projects, including Magento and Zend Framework.
When I’m not working I spend time with my beautiful wife, travel, and do some research to broaden my skills.
WORK HISTORY
Founder
Strategery, Inc.
Responsible for the day-to-day operations of the company. I spend most of my time with Strategery in meetings interfacing with clients, distributing responsibilities, submitting project proposals, etc.
Freelance Web Developer
Worked for several international clients as Project Manager using technologies such as Magento, Zend, WordPress, Ruby on Rails, Joomla and Amazon Web Services (EC2, EBS, S3). Contributed to a few open-source projects such as the official Twitter Ruby gem (library) and Adobe Kuler’s PHP library..
Senior Rails Developer
Aycron Solutions (Argentina)
Build custom CMS in Ruby on Rails for clients in the USA.
Teen Geek
12 years old
This is where my passion for web development began – with Macromedia Flash 5. Built a handful of websites and games by the age of 13. Around age 15 shifted away from web to learn Visual Basic, then C & C++, eventually to return to the web with PHP at age 18 and Ruby on Rails at 20.
BACK-END SKILLS
Magento
WordPress
Ruby on Rails
PHP (other frameworks)
Best Practices
FRONT-END SKILLS
HTML5
CSS3
jQuery
Responsive
PSD to HTML
Best Practices
BUSINESS SKILLS
Project Management
Client Relations
Ecommerce
TESTIMONIALS
Chris BunkVP of Technology / Refinery29
I’ve had the fortune of working with Gabriel on numerous projects and been very impressed with not only his technical abilities (and ability to learn new things) but his professional maturity which would be strong for someone twice his age.
Jess Levin Co-Founder / Carats & Cake
As our Technical Director, Gabriel has been a critical addition to the Carats & Cake team. His technical expertise and excellent management skills have strengthened our engineering team and helped us deliver a very scalable, high-quality product. I would highly recommend Gabriel for use on both startups or existing product teams.
Lew Alpert Founder / Chilmark Digital
Gabriel has worked as Technical Director for several products in our company. He helped us to improve our processes, infrastructure and practices, and went above and beyond what was asked of him. His efforts and strategic advice led to a more robust architecture and new features. I’m extremely satisfied with his technical knowledge and management skills – and would recommend him to anyone seeking an excellent engineer or project manager.
Michael Mignona Founder / MINYONA
Gabriel is an amazing problem solver and is extremely personable. I will definitely work with him in the near future, and so should you.