projects chronology · 2003- present
James Tarleton
Senior Drupal & Web Platform Developer · 17 years of enterprise projects
Select a period above to explore projects & work
2003 – 2008
BS, Management Information Systems · Computing Lab Administrator
Student & Early University Web Projects
Auburn University · Student & Independent Contractor
Auburn University Web Infrastructure
Worked on Auburn's university web presence as a student employee in the Computing Lab. Gained hands-on experience in content management, web publishing, and the day-to-day administration of shared university infrastructure.
Student Employee
Auburn University Athletics Website
Contributed to the Auburn Athletics website as a student employee, built on the university's shared web infrastructure. Supported content publishing and site maintenance for one of the SEC's largest athletics programs.
Senior Project
E-Commerce Website
Built a PHP and MySQL e-commerce website as a senior capstone project for the MIS program — applying coursework in database design, systems analysis, and information architecture to a real transactional application.
Independent Contract Web Development
Independent web development work alongside studies and after graduation. Built custom PHP websites and database-backed applications for small clients — the formative period before moving into agency and enterprise environments.
2008 – 2011
PHP / Symfony Developer
Migrating a High-Traffic Education Platform from Perl to PHP
Barnes & Noble · SparkNotes Team
SparkNotes — Perl to PHP Migration
Rewrote the SparkNotes website from its legacy Perl codebase to Symfony PHP — one of the web's most heavily trafficked student education platforms, serving millions of users a month. Handled routing, page rendering, and backend logic while keeping the full content library intact throughout the transition.
SparkNotes Study Guide Platform
Developed features and backend code for the core SparkNotes literature study guide platform — structured content delivery, user accounts, and content access for Barnes & Noble's digital education arm.
SparkCollege — College Search Tool
Developed a college search tool for the SparkCollege section of SparkNotes, powered by Apache Solr. Students could search for colleges by proximity to any address, then narrow results by tuition range, student body size, and other facets — with full institutional data displayed for each result. An early example of geospatial search applied to a consumer education product.
SparkLife Student Blog
Built and maintained SparkLife, a student lifestyle blog running on WordPress as a parallel project within the SparkNotes site on its own subdomain.
2011 – 2018
PHP / Symfony Developer → Drupal Developer
Custom Business Applications, Data Pipelines & Industry Platform Migration
Association of National Advertisers · Ad-ID (jointly owned by ANA & 4A's)
2011 – 2014 · ANA · Symfony PHP Developer
3 years
Membership Management CRM
Built a custom internal CRM for managing ANA's national advertising association membership base — handling new member onboarding, renewals, and retention workflows for one of the largest trade organizations in the marketing industry.
Marketing Knowledge Center
Developed a members-only research library platform giving ANA members access to a large catalog of proprietary marketing studies, reports, and industry data — with search, categorization, and access control.
Membership Reporting & Business Intelligence
Built internal dashboards and data reporting tools tracking membership growth, engagement, and retention for ANA leadership — pulling from multiple internal data sources into unified management views.
Data Warehousing
Built data warehousing infrastructure supporting the full suite of ANA internal tools — consolidating data from separate systems into a unified layer feeding the CRM, reporting, and BI applications.
2014 – 2018 · Ad-ID · Drupal Developer
4 years
Ad-ID Platform Migration
Migrated the Ad-ID platform — the advertising industry's standard system for assigning unique identifiers to every ad asset in broadcast and digital media — from an aging custom database application to Drupal. Ad-ID is jointly operated by ANA and the 4A's and is used by every major advertiser and broadcaster in the US.
Nielsen Data Integration — 5M+ Records
Built data pipelines to process and sync over 5 million records from Nielsen's corporate hierarchy datasets — used to validate advertising identifiers against the full tree of US corporate entities, brands, and subsidiaries.
Customer Churn & Revenue Forecasting
Developed reporting and analytics tools for tracking subscriber churn and projecting future revenue — drawing on account lifecycle data, renewal patterns, and Nielsen corporate relationships to surface actionable forecasts for the Ad-ID business team.
2018 – 2022
Senior Drupal Developer
Web Platforms for NYC Government
New York City Department of Transportation
Street Improvement Projects (OneSIP)
Built and maintained the public-facing platform tracking NYC's street improvement capital projects — giving residents, contractors, and city agencies a unified view of hundreds of active infrastructure projects across all five boroughs.
Parking Permits
Developed the city-wide parking permit application and management system — a high-volume public-facing tool serving residents, contractors, and city agencies processing permit requests across New York City.
Citi Bike & Scooter Share Programs
Built public-facing web platforms for NYC's Citi Bike bicycle share program and the city's electric scooter pilot — integrating real-time availability data with public-facing information and program updates.
DOT Projects & Initiatives Hub
Developed an umbrella platform surfacing the full range of NYC DOT capital and safety programs in one place — with editorial workflows that let agency staff publish and update program information across departments.
Production Releases & Deployment Automation
Led production deployments and built automation tooling for the DOT's Drupal platform portfolio — streamlining releases, environment management, and deployment pipelines across a multi-site city government infrastructure.
2022 – 2024
Senior Drupal Developer
Enterprise Web Projects for Agency Clients
Velir · Digital Agency
AARP
Worked on platform engineering for one of the largest membership organizations in the US — supporting high-traffic content delivery and enterprise web architecture serving tens of millions of members.
Charles & Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies
Built the web platform for a major US philanthropic foundation — supporting grant program communications, multi-initiative content, and editorial workflows for a staff managing several distinct funding areas.
Results for Development (R4D)
Developed the web platform for a global nonprofit working in health, education, and nutrition — supporting international research publication, multilingual content, and outreach to partners across multiple countries.
ICI · PNCB · IPN · Definitive Healthcare
Delivered web projects across a range of clients — Investment Company Institute (financial services trade association), Pediatric Nursing Certification Board and Institute of Pediatric Nursing (professional healthcare certifications), and Definitive Healthcare (B2B healthcare data and analytics).
2024 – Present
Senior Drupal Developer
Enterprise Web Platforms for Financial Exchanges
International Options Exchange Holdings · Fintech
Drupal Platform Architecture
Leading Drupal 11 platform engineering for a fintech company in the options exchange space — covering server configuration, content architecture, security hardening, and performance under the compliance requirements of a regulated financial environment.
Platform Upgrades & Dependency Management
Managing the upgrade path from Drupal 10 to 11 — resolving package dependency conflicts, maintaining compatibility across third-party modules, and keeping the platform current with PHP version requirements.
Content Modeling & Page Layout Architecture
Designed and built the content modeling and flexible page layout system — giving editors structured control over page composition while maintaining clean, maintainable code underneath.
Security Audit Module
Designed and built an open-source Drupal module that audits a site's HTTP security headers, scores them, assigns a letter grade, and generates a visual report — available for any Drupal site to use and contributed back to the community.
Cloud Infrastructure & Caching Strategy
Designed and documented the full web request path — from Akamai's content delivery network through AWS load balancing, web servers, and the Drupal application — optimizing caching strategy and performance at each layer for a financial services environment.
Auburn University (2003–08)
Barnes & Noble · SparkNotes (2008–11)
ANA · Ad-ID (2011–18)
NYC Dept. of Transportation (2018–22)
Velir Digital Agency (2022–24)
Int'l Options Exchange Holdings (2024–present)