Will Schmierer III
Direction: forward deployment engineering
I build and stabilize production web systems, embed close to the workflow, and deploy practical AI where it actually helps the operation.
Twenty years shipping on the web. Seven years leading Fortune 500 engineering teams. Forward-deployed delivery is how I work, not the only thing I do.
Also at willschmierer.com · lovablegazelle.com · built.wtf
The craft is web and platform engineering. The direction is forward deployment engineering. The leverage is practical AI.
How I Fit
Bring me in when the work spans a production web platform, a messy business workflow, and a team that needs senior delivery judgment. I'm not the person who writes a prompt and leaves. I'm the person who gets the system into production and stays with it until it holds.
WordPress, Astro, APIs, data flow, QA gates, release flow. The foundation has to be stable before AI is useful.
Talk to the operators, find the handoff failures, and separate useful automation from the stuff that only looks good in a demo.
Ship it, watch it, fix what reality exposes, and leave the team with a system they can actually run.
Track Record
The through-line is web engineering under real constraints: build the platform, understand the operation, keep responsibility through launch.
30-person agency, remote
WebDevStudios, Jacksonville, FL (Remote)
Metro Jacksonville
Ox Nest Studios, LLC
Think Dynasty LLC, Williamsburg, VA
Smellycat Productions, Williamsburg, VA
Zubillaga Design, Florida
Foxtons North America, New Jersey
The Arc
University of Miami, School of Architecture. Four years of critiques taught me how to take hard feedback, iterate in public, and pull a room together around a single idea. That's where I learned to lead. Real estate in Jersey after that, then Zubillaga Design back in Florida. High-end residential and commercial work across Florida, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
Certificates at Miami Dade. Founded and ran a boutique WordPress agency. Learned how to ship client work, manage delivery, and build systems from zero. Agency life taught me how to deploy under real constraints before I ever touched enterprise scale.
Led 100+ engineers across time zones for Fortune 500 clients. Built the systems, processes, and culture that let teams ship reliably at scale. 96% retention. 15 promotions. The machine ran and kept running after I left.
Now I'm back. You can try to knock me down, but you're going to have to hit harder because I keep surviving.
Founded a survivor-focused recovery community in 2022. 50+ members, stroke and chronic illness survivors, building back together. Multi-channel content, podcast collaborations, peer support. The rebuild doesn't end. You just start bringing other people with you.
Plumbing apprentice through NEFBA. Same systems thinking from architecture school, now applied to physical infrastructure. When I deploy something, it has to work in the real world, not just in theory.
Running digital operations for a 30-person agency. Building autonomous agent teams that ship real client work overnight. Founded Lovable Gazelle to put senior engineering leadership, web platforms, forward delivery, and practical AI together. The architect never left. He just learned how to deploy systems that actually work in production.
Twenty years in. Still building. The next chapter is wide open.
Principles and Values
Firm, collaborative, transparent. I lead with people, not above them. Anti-top-down, anti-bureaucratic.
Maker identity over title identity. Ship the thing.
Curious and evolving. Confident enough to change my mind the second someone has a better idea.
Fluent in both dev and client. Spent twenty years in the middle, turning requirements into code and code into answers. That's the job.
The opposite of how most shops run. Tell clients the hard thing before the bill goes sideways. Set expectations you can beat, then beat them.
Responsiveness is table stakes, not a feature. Real check-ins, real updates, no dodging. Every few years, a client asks me when I'm starting my own agency again.
Current Focus
This is the work I want more of: production web engineering close enough to the business to see what actually needs to change.
WordPress, Astro, security response, delivery throughput
Owning production web systems from architecture through launch: platform cleanup, environment hardening, release planning, performance, and the engineering judgment that keeps teams shipping under pressure.
Workflow mapping, operators, handoffs, launch ownership
Embedding with the people doing the work, finding the real bottlenecks, and staying close enough to make sure the system survives contact with the business.
Agent workflows, orchestration, quality gates
Using AI as leverage inside real delivery systems: scoped workflows, review checkpoints, test handoffs, and automation that helps teams in the real world, not just demos.
Technical Range
WordPress block themes, REST API, WP-CLI, FSE, Astro, PHP, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Next.js, Node.js, Python
Workflow discovery, operator interviews, stakeholder translation, release planning, client-safe handoffs, launch ownership
Claude Code, Claude API, Anthropic SDK, multi-agent orchestration, MCP, prompt engineering, quality gates, practical automation
WP Engine, Cloudflare, Vercel, incident response, malware remediation, environment hardening, remote team leadership, enterprise delivery
Receipts
The proof is production work: web platforms, operating workflows, AI systems, and the handoffs that make them usable after launch.
Main Site
The broader builder profile: web systems, engineering leadership, agent work, and the longer story behind the forward deployment pitch.
Visit →
Forward-Deployed Agency
Web and AI systems for trades operators. Built around the same premise as this page: understand the real workflow, then ship something useful.
Visit →
Portfolio & Blog
Projects and writing on agentic engineering, web development, and the difference between AI theater and production delivery.
Deployment Infrastructure
Multi-agent orchestration for coordinating specialized AI workers across scoped tasks, review handoffs, and concurrent delivery work.
See it →Security at Scale
Forward-deployed into a live WordPress security problem: triage, remediation, environment hardening, and the judgment to find what automated scanners missed.
See more →Autonomous Build
One scoped workflow, one agent, one night, one client website: 18 patterns, 23 templates, 10 commits, with production handoff in mind.
See it →Community
Active in the WordPress community since 2008. Regular WordCamp attendee. Shipping real work on WordPress, cleaning up other people's WordPress, and teaching other developers how to do both.
Founded and lead a 50+ member community for stroke and chronic illness survivors. Multi-channel content, podcast collaborations, peer support. From "Good Enough" to "Unstoppable AF". Navigating recovery together since 2022.
Coached 35+ technical professionals into effective project leaders and managers through structured coaching programs. 100% retention, 5 senior role promotions.
Where I'm Headed
Always thinking, always exploring, always questioning, always building.
Twenty years building things that ship. Architecture school. WordPress on the agency side. Fortune 500 engineering leadership. The trades, literally, on weekends. A few other lives in between that don't fit on a LinkedIn timeline. Most people look at all that and see a job-hopper. I see the same job in a lot of different uniforms.
One of those lives almost ended me. I lost both parents, then a stroke, then an MS diagnosis, then almost two years learning to walk again. Came back down 300 pounds. That's where the relentless comes from. When I tell a team I'll stay on something until it's actually working, I mean it the way you only can after you've had to rebuild yourself from the floor up.
Right now I'm running digital operations, shipping with autonomous agents, and cleaning up the kind of WordPress messes that twenty years of scar tissue lets you see coming. Web and platform engineering is the craft. But I don't hand a system off and disappear. I get close to the work, deploy where it actually helps, and stay on the hook until it holds in production. The architect in me can't ship something that doesn't stand up. That's the whole pitch.
I'm looking for a small, high-trust team that gives a damn about craft. Clarity, ownership, follow-through. Founders with cool projects, teams that need someone who can own a web platform end to end and stay close enough to make it actually work, or just a conversation about where this is all going. You know where to find me.
What it's all for
Three kids and a wife in Jacksonville. That's the whole why. The work. The rebuild. The relentless. Everything else is just how. Build something they can stand on. Build something that holds.
Education & Certifications
University of Miami
2001 to 2005
Southern New Hampshire University
Expected May 2026
Let's talk
Web platform work, forward deployment engineering, AI systems, or a hard operational mess that needs senior ownership. Email is fastest. Phone works. The calendar is open if you would rather grab a slot.
Not the right fit if...
LinkedIn is the version they want. The site is the real one. Email is faster.
Jacksonville, FL