Ivan ZugecContactContact me

Senior full-stack developerIvan Zugec

18+ years building Drupal platforms for government and corporate clients. PHP, JavaScript and DevOps.

Split, Croatia (EU citizen) · English (native), Croatian (A2)

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Ivan Zugec

Summary

Senior developer with 18+ years building Drupal platforms for Australian Government agencies and corporate clients, including Transport for NSW and the Department of Finance. Full stack across PHP, JavaScript (React, Next.js, Vue.js) and DevOps (Docker, Lagoon, CI/CD).

Tech lead on multi-site upgrades, migrations and headless builds for sites serving millions of visitors a month.

Claude Code and Codex have been part of my day-to-day workflow for the past year. Each feature starts with a spec, built in a “grill me” session where the agent questions every requirement and edge case. A second model reviews the spec before any code is written.

Core competencies

  • Full-Stack Development (PHP/JavaScript)
  • Drupal Architecture (7/8/9/10/11)
  • Headless CMS
  • React & Next.js
  • DevOps (Docker/Lagoon)
  • Technical Leadership
  • Government Sector Experience
  • Agile/Scrum
  • API Development
  • Client Relations
LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/ivanzugecGitHubgithub.com/IvanZugec
AvailabilityAvailable to start now

Technical skills

Backend Development

  • PHP
  • Drupal (7/8/9/10/11)
  • Symfony
  • MySQL
  • REST APIs
  • GraphQL
  • JSON:API
  • Composer
  • Drush
  • Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)

Frontend Development

  • JavaScript (ES6+)
  • React
  • Next.js
  • Vue.js
  • HTML5
  • CSS3/SASS
  • Webpack
  • TypeScript
  • Node.js

DevOps & Infrastructure

  • Docker
  • Lagoon
  • Acquia Cloud
  • GovCMS
  • CI/CD Pipelines
  • Git
  • GitLab
  • GitHub
  • AWS

Development Practices

  • Agile/Scrum
  • Code Reviews
  • PHPUnit
  • Jest
  • Behat
  • Accessibility (WCAG)
  • Performance Optimization

Experience

Morpht

2014 – Present

Senior Developer

Sep 2024 – Present · Remote

  • Lead developer on the Convivial Gov Site Template, a government website built on the Morphos theme and Drupal Canvas. A new site spins up in minutes with test data and style guide pages, ready to duplicate and build on.
  • Moved Convivial for GovCMS, Morpht's platform for sites on GovCMS (the Australian Government Drupal platform), from Bootstrap to Morphos across 48 paragraph types, 19 of them rendered through single directory components.
  • Built components and their Drupal Canvas variants for Morphos, an open-source Drupal theme of 60+ single directory components built with Tailwind CSS, daisyUI and Vite.
  • Set up BackstopJS visual regression testing across 20+ GovCMS sites, which made platform updates easier to roll out and reduced bugs after deployment.
  • Fixed accessibility issues to WCAG 2.1 across 20 government websites.
  • Maintain a portfolio of 20+ GovCMS sites on Lagoon and Docker, serving 100,000+ visitors a month.

Senior Drupal Developer (contract)

Apr 2018 – Jun 2018 · Sydney, Australia

Senior Developer

Jan 2014 – Jul 2015 · Sydney, Australia

  • Managed a distributed team of 5 developers and designers across Australia and Europe.
  • Technical lead for state and federal government Drupal projects on Acquia Cloud, working directly with stakeholders on requirements across 10 projects.

Projects

Morphos repository on GitHub

Morphos

2026

A modern Drupal theme built from single directory components, styled with Tailwind CSS and daisyUI, and compiled with Vite.

  • Drupal
  • PHP
  • SDC
  • Tailwind CSS
  • daisyUI
  • Vite
Convivial for Gov demo site home page

Convivial Gov Site Template

2026

A reusable government website, built with Morphos and Drupal Canvas and packaged as a Drupal site template that installs in one step.

  • Drupal
  • PHP
  • Drupal Canvas
  • Morphos
  • Site templates
Convivial for GovCMS home page

Convivial for GovCMS

2026

Moved a GovCMS platform from Bootstrap to the Morphos theme across 48 paragraph types, 19 of them rendered through single directory components.

  • GovCMS
  • Drupal
  • PHP
  • Paragraphs
  • SDC
  • Tailwind CSS
  • daisyUI

WebWash

2012 – Present

Owner / Senior Drupal Consultant

Aug 2012 – Present

  • Published 250+ Drupal tutorials and videos on webwash.net and YouTube, with 8,000+ YouTube subscribers.
  • Run a weekly Drupal live stream where I solve real site-building and development problems, 100+ streams so far.
  • Consult on Drupal architecture, custom modules and performance for 10+ clients.
  • Taught and mentored 20,000+ students on Drupal, PHP and JavaScript integration across Udemy, YouTube and private courses.

Salsa Digital

2020 – 2025

Senior Developer and Presales Technical Lead (part-time contract)

May 2025 – Sep 2025 · Remote

  • Built a one-click CivicTheme integration for GovCMS in PHP with PHPUnit tests. Spinning up a CivicTheme site on GovCMS went from hours of manual work to minutes.
  • Gave presales technical support on five Drupal projects, including estimates, architecture and stack recommendations.
  • Recorded and updated 21 training videos for the GovCMS platform covering site building, theming and module development.

Technical Team Lead

Jun 2020 – Feb 2021 · Sydney, Australia

  • Tech lead across three GovCMS8 websites: Global Alumni and a group of Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade sites.
  • Tech lead on the GovCMS Application Support team, which covered about 200 GovCMS sites and handled about seven tickets a day, resolving escalated issues and adding monitoring.
  • Produced 21 training videos for GovCMS8 content administrators.

Transport for NSW

2017 – 2024

Senior Software Engineer

Jul 2022 – Jun 2024 · Sydney, Australia

  • Tech lead on the Drupal 9 to 10 upgrade of 15+ sites, covering PHP 8 compatibility, deprecated code and PHPUnit tests. Finished in about three months with zero downtime.
  • Helped build a headless platform that runs many agency sites from one Drupal 10 instance with Next.js frontends. A new site launches by deploying the standard frontend, where each one used to be a separate Drupal build. 18 sites run on it, and provisioning a new one with the standard style guide takes days where it used to take weeks.
  • Built the custom REST endpoints and GraphQL schemas the Next.js frontends read from.
  • Worked with the React team on caching and cut API response times from about 1 second to about 100 ms.
  • Kept the portfolio of headless Drupal 10 sites running on AWS for millions of monthly visitors.

Software Engineer

Aug 2019 – Feb 2020 · Sydney, Australia

  • Converted ridetolive.nsw.gov.au from an older Drupal 8 build to Vue.js components for its interactive features, backed by custom PHP modules.
  • Maintained the Drupal 8 portfolio in Docker environments with automated deployments.

Software Engineer

Jul 2018 – Feb 2019 · Sydney, Australia

Senior Drupal Developer (contract)

Jan 2017 – Sep 2017 · Sydney, Australia

  • Lead Drupal developer on the rebuild of transportnsw.info, moving every page and the trip planner from a licensed proprietary CMS to Drupal 8 for 2M+ monthly visitors.
  • Trip-related calls to the call centre dropped 30% after launch, and retiring the proprietary CMS cut licensing costs.
  • Integrated the trip planner with Drupal over REST APIs, working with the frontend team.
  • Built a booking widget in React, Webpack and ES6 that reads from Drupal over JSON:API.

Projects

transport.nsw.gov.au home page

transport.nsw.gov.au

2018 – 2024

Maintained the main Transport for NSW site and helped build a platform that runs many agency sites from one Drupal instance with Next.js frontends.

  • Drupal 8–10
  • PHP
  • Next.js
  • React
  • GraphQL
  • Docker
  • AWS
Ride to Live home page

ridetolive.nsw.gov.au

2019

Converted an older Drupal 8 site to use Vue.js components for its interactive features, backed by custom PHP modules.

  • Drupal 8
  • PHP
  • Vue.js
transportnsw.info home page

transportnsw.info

2017

Rebuilt the NSW public transport information site on Drupal 8, including the trip planner integration, for 2M+ monthly visitors.

  • Drupal 8
  • PHP
  • React
  • Webpack
  • REST
  • JSON:API

Department of Finance

2021 – 2022

Senior Drupal Developer

Mar 2021 – Jun 2022 · Sydney, Australia

  • Upgraded Directory.gov.au, the Australian Government's directory of organisations, boards and their members, from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9. The move was closer to a rebuild than an upgrade.
  • Wrote Migrate API scripts that carried 10,000+ content items across with their data intact.
  • Rewrote about 20 custom modules for Drupal 9 (500+ hours of development), including the integration that pulls in directory items, and refactored the theme.
  • Optimised the MySQL database, which cut page loads on large directory queries to about 100 ms.
  • Worked with the GovCMS Technical Product Owner on platform practices and security hardening.

Projects

Directory.gov.au home page

Directory.gov.au

2021 – 2022

Upgraded the Australian Government Directory from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9, migrating custom modules and 10,000+ content items.

  • Drupal 9
  • PHP
  • Migrate API
  • MySQL

Technocrat

2019

Senior Drupal Developer (contract)

Apr 2019 – May 2019 · Sydney, Australia

  • Migrated Energy Rating from a self-hosted Drupal site to the GovCMS 8 SaaS platform, rebuilding its features within the platform's restrictions. The agency no longer hosts the site itself.

Projects

Energy Rating home page

Energy Rating

2019

Moved the Energy Rating website from a self-hosted Drupal site onto the GovCMS 8 SaaS platform.

  • GovCMS 8
  • Drupal 8
  • PHP
  • Migrate API

Data Republic

2017 – 2018

Senior Drupal Developer (contract)

Sep 2017 – Mar 2018 · Sydney, Australia

  • Built a data sharing marketplace on Drupal 8 for the Department of Finance, Services and Innovation, with custom PHP modules and REST APIs, listing about 150 datasets.
  • Wrote migrations from a CKAN open data instance into Drupal using the Migrate API, moving 100,000+ records.

IAG

2015 – 2016

Senior Analyst Programmer, Drupal Developer (contract)

Nov 2015 – Dec 2016 · Sydney, Australia

  • Technical lead for two brand websites on Drupal 7/8, responsible for architecture, code quality and deployments.
  • Built custom modules for insurance product displays and quote workflows.
  • Part of the team that built a multi-step insurance application form in React.

Digilante

2015

Web Developer (contract)

Aug 2015 – Oct 2015 · Sydney, Australia

  • Built Drupal websites for an ASX listed company.
  • Wrote a Drush and bash workflow that turned a manual deployment and database sync process into an automated one that runs in about 30 seconds.

Sitback Solutions

2012

Senior Technical Developer

Feb 2012 – Aug 2012 · Sydney, Australia

  • Technical lead on Subaru BRZ online, the first Australian website to sell a car directly. Per-order pricing and inventory tracking handled a limited allocation. Built on Drupal Commerce with a custom bank integration. The 2012 allocation of 201 cars sold out in about three hours.
  • Built a multi-site Drupal platform running 50+ car dealer websites, provisioned with Aegir. A new dealer site could be spun up in under an hour.

Projects

Subaru BRZ online ordering page

Subaru BRZ online

2012

The first website in Australia where you could order a car directly, built on Drupal Commerce with a custom bank integration.

  • Drupal 7
  • PHP
  • Drupal Commerce

CrossFunctional

2010 – 2012

Drupal Consultant

May 2010 – Jan 2012 · Sydney, Australia

  • Lead Drupal developer on the Drupal 6 Taronga Zoo website, with tickets, events, donations and animal profiles.
  • Technical lead for UNSW's teaching portal.
  • Integrated Drupal with a proprietary CRM over a custom REST API, and ran code and security audits for client sites.

Projects

Taronga Zoo home page

Taronga Zoo

2010

A new Drupal 6 website for Taronga Zoo with tickets, events, donations and animal profiles.

  • Drupal 6
  • PHP

Express Media Group

2009 – 2010

Senior Drupal Developer

Feb 2009 – May 2010 · Sydney, Australia

  • Migrated the 4WD Action website to Drupal 6 and tuned it for 500K+ monthly pageviews.
  • Built community websites for craft magazines and a standard Drupal installation profile for launching new sites quickly.

Neubreed Design Pty Ltd

2007 – 2009

Web Developer

Oct 2007 – Jan 2009 · Sydney, Australia

  • Maintained Drupal 6 websites with custom modules and built sites on the Symfony 1.x PHP framework.

Speaking

Nov 2014

Client vs Site Builder (Using Paragraphs)

Drupal Camp Sydney 2014 · Shared presentation

Videos on WebWash

I make these videos to stay on top of the latest trends in Drupal and the wider CMS world, and because I like teaching people. Live streams are my favourite: there's no second take, you just get in and do it.

WebWash

@WebWash9K subscribers · 1,000+ videos

Drupal tutorials, CMS comparisons and weekly live build sessions.

SubscribeLive streams

Drupal

EmDash

Strapi

Payload CMS

Certifications and education

Certifications

  • Acquia Certified Developer - Drupal 7Acquia · May 2014
  • Certified ScrumMasterScrum Alliance · Dec 2014 - Dec 2018

Education

  • Certificate IV Information Technologies (Web Design)TAFE Western Sydney Institute, Australia · 2003
  • Diploma Information Technology (Network Engineering)TAFE Western Sydney Institute, Australia · 2002

Languages

  • EnglishNative speaker
  • CroatianA2 level

Hiring, or have a project in mind?

Get in touch and tell me about the role or what you're building.

Contact me
LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/ivanzugecGitHubgithub.com/IvanZugec
AvailabilityAvailable to start now