Charles Tanton
KEY QUALITIES AND SKILLS
Backend Drupal engineer with 20 years of experience, based in Kommetjie on the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. I'm currently at Tag1 Consulting, working on Drupal 11 and PHP 8+ systems for a confidential Top 10 Global 500 company.
Most of my work is on the backend: custom modules, APIs, custom entity architecture, and large-site work. I started out studying actual bugs (BSc in Zoology and Entomology, Honours in Wildlife Management) and somewhere along the way ended up debugging software instead.
A long stretch of my career was spent with non-profits, including lead-developer work on the Music In Africa portal from 2015 to 2018. I'm a founding member of the Drupal Johannesburg User Group and have been active in the Cape Town community for years. I currently maintain Entity Inspector and contribute to other modules I rely on at work.
Outside work: surfing, writing songs, piano, singing in a community choir, and the occasional walking safari.
NOTABLE AREAS OF EXPERTISE
Backend: Drupal 10/11, PHP 8+, Symfony components, custom module development, custom entity architecture, REST APIs / JSON:API, Migrate API, Drupal Configuration Management
Frontend (occasional): JavaScript, TypeScript, SvelteKit, Twig, accessibility (WCAG)
Testing & code quality: PHPUnit (kernel, browser, ExistingSite), PHPStan, PHPCS, Selenium
Tooling: DDEV, Composer, Drush, Git, CI/CD pipelines, MySQL, Linux command line