Dan L.Private profile: Upwork shows its earnings only to signed-in members, so we check it every few weeks, not daily. MRR here is a rough estimate (Upwork's six-month earnings ÷ months active). Last read Nov 5, 2026.

Senior engineer, 14+ years, WordPress VIP certified. I build the things plugins can't do: custom Gutenberg blocks, bespoke integrations, Laravel backends, and AI features that run server-side with proper cost control. Modern PHP and TypeScript, clean code, no surprises later. Iași, Romania. Remote, with overlap for US and EU hours. What I build Custom Gutenberg blocks. Native React blocks, ACF blocks, dynamic blocks, patterns, full block themes. Attribute schemas that don't break on save, server-side previews, and an editor your content team can actually use. WordPress plugins and integrations. Payment gateways, CRMs, ERPs, REST and GraphQL APIs, Airtable, MSSQL, headless setups, complex ACF and custom post type architectures. Built to WordPress VIP standards: namespaced, tested, reviewed, documented. Laravel. APIs, admin panels, queues and scheduled jobs, third-party integrations. Often the backend behind a WordPress or headless frontend when WordPress alone isn't the right tool. AI in WordPress and beyond. Claude and OpenAI features built into Gutenberg, WP-CLI and custom plugins. API calls stay on the server, never in the browser. Rate limits, cost logging, embeddings search, RAG over your own content. I've built an MCP server for WordPress so AI agents can work with a site directly, and I use Claude Code every day. I took Matt Pocock's AI Coding for Real Engineers course at AI Hero, which is about doing this properly rather than fast. Headless and new stacks. MedusaJS v2 storefronts and checkouts with Next.js. Astro sites. EmDash, Cloudflare's new Astro-based CMS, which I'm building with now. If you're wondering whether to leave WordPress, I can tell you honestly whether it's worth it for your site. How I work PHP 8.1+ and TypeScript as first languages, Node for services and tooling, Python where the AI side needs it. Strict types, idiomatic code, no clever tricks the next developer has to decode. Git, CI/CD, code review. I scope before I start, so the estimate holds. Stacks I work in daily WordPress: core, Gutenberg, ACF Pro, WooCommerce, FacetWP, SearchWP, WP All Import, Gravity Forms, WordPress VIP Roots: Bedrock, Sage, Trellis, Acorn PHP: Laravel AI: Anthropic Claude, Claude Code, OpenAI, Gemini, embeddings, pgvector, Pinecone, RAG, MCP JS: TypeScript, React, Next.js, Astro, EmDash, MedusaJS v2, Nuxt Who I'm a fit for Agencies and direct clients who want senior work, not the cheapest rate. If your last developer said WordPress can't do that, it probably can. And if it genuinely can't, I'll say so and build it in Laravel or Astro instead.