About Shail Agrawal — Senior WordPress & PHP Engineer
7 years, four engineering roles, one thing that hasn't changed: I build things that hold up in production.
Senior backend engineering, built on real production experience.
I'm a Senior Backend Engineer and Technical Lead based in Ahmedabad, India, with 7+ years of professional experience building on WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, and core PHP.
Before moving into web development, I worked in IT and network support, including a role with NTEC in New Zealand, alongside a Graduate Diploma in IT. That background shows up in how I think about production systems — server behavior, uptime, and infrastructure aren't abstractions to me; I've been responsible for keeping systems running from the infrastructure layer up.
What "senior" actually means here.
Concretely: I design plugin architecture meant to survive being maintained by someone other than me. I write REST API integrations that connect WordPress to CRMs, payment gateways, and third-party services without turning into fragile glue code. I optimize for Core Web Vitals and real database performance, not just Lighthouse scores. And I've mentored 5+ junior engineers and led code reviews, which means I'm as comfortable handing off clean documentation as I am shipping the code itself.
I also build with AI-assisted tooling — Cursor, Claude, and ChatGPT — as part of my day-to-day workflow, which speeds up delivery without changing the standard I hold the output to. Every line still gets reviewed against the same architecture and security bar I'd apply to work I typed by hand.
How I approach freelance work.
I hold a full-time technical leadership role, and I'm upfront about that: this isn't a side hustle I'm trying to grow into full-time work, and it isn't a full-time job search either. It's how I take on the kind of scoped, high-leverage engineering problems that don't fit neatly into a 9-to-5 — a performance audit, a plugin rebuild, an integration that's stuck, an architecture review before a big migration. Because I'm selective about what I take on, every freelance engagement gets senior-level focus, clear communication, and realistic timelines instead of vague promises.
Availability
I'm open for freelance/contract projects and typically respond to new inquiries within 24–48 hours.