Senior PHP · WordPress · Laravel ·
Switzerland / Remote
Software
systems
that survive
reality.
I help agencies and product teams with the work that blocks delivery: stuck production bugs, fragile releases, WordPress fleets, and manual operations worth automating. I work white-label behind your process, document everything, and hand it back clean.
Diagram of how the work moves. A blocked ticket from your team’s tracker comes in as a written brief. Diagnose: reproduce on staging, then trace to the line. Status ok: found. Fix: a patch plus a regression test. Status ok: tested. Release: deploy through your pipeline, then verify in production. Status ok: live. The work is documented and handed back as a clean handover with notes and a runbook. Session log: the repro script on staging gives a warning, bug reproduced; the regression tests are ok, tests pass; the verified deploy is ok, released and notes updated.
Diagram of how the work moves. A blocked ticket from your team’s tracker comes in as a written brief. Diagnose: reproduce on staging, then trace to the line. Status ok: found. Fix: a patch plus a regression test. Status ok: tested. Release: deploy through your pipeline, then verify in production. Status ok: live. The work is documented and handed back as a clean handover with notes and a runbook. Session log: the repro script on staging gives a warning, bug reproduced; the regression tests are ok, tests pass; the verified deploy is ok, released and notes updated.
- 15+ years building for the web
- PHP · Laravel · WordPress · MySQL · DevOps
- Switzerland / available remotely
Useful systems beat impressive demos.
Escalation & maintenance
Senior help when your team is stuck: production debugging, incident diagnosis, performance investigations, and ongoing PHP, Laravel and WordPress maintenance, all behind your process.
See it in practiceWordPress & release reliability
Stability work for WordPress, WooCommerce and multisite, plus CI/CD, backups, rollback plans and deployment checklists for teams whose releases are fragile.
See it in practiceAutomation & AI workflows
n8n, GitHub Actions and API integrations for recurring manual work, plus scoped AI pilots with a human-review loop and a clear owner.
Projects where the constraints mattered.
- ok
- warn
- fail
- Case study 01/03Operational analytics
A silent data-corruption bug in a Laravel sync pipeline
Failed API calls were being saved as zero hours, silently overwriting correct reporting data. I made failure distinguishable from zero, bounded the sync window, repaired the corrupted records, and removed a scheduler deadlock.
Diagram of the fixed sync. A sync job makes an API call over a bounded sync window, and the result splits into two paths. Ok path: the hours from the API are written and the report is updated. Fail path: the result is null, kept distinct from zero, so the write is skipped and the existing data is kept. Nothing is overwritten. Warning, before the fix: a failed call was saved as 0 hours.
- Case study 02/03WordPress multisite platform
Phased WordPress updates across dozens of environments
A GitHub Actions pipeline that tests core and plugin updates once on template environments, then promotes the exact tested files through internal, staging and production, with mandatory backups and per-environment failure isolation.
Diagram of the phased update pipeline. Updates are tested once on two template environments, one multisite and one single-site. Status ok. The exact tested files are then promoted byte-for-byte to the internal environments, then staging, then production. In each environment a backup runs first, then the update. Divergent plugins branch off and are updated individually in each environment. Status fail: a failure halts only its own environment.
- Case study 03/03Deployment & infrastructure
Standardized WordPress migrations across a hosting fleet
A repeatable migration runbook (pull-based rsync, externalized credentials, verify before cutover) that removed the main sources of manual error from server moves.
Diagram of the migration runbook. Step 1: the source, the old server. Step 2: the destination initiates an rsync pull, with database credentials externalized to environment variables. Step 3: verify. Status ok. Step 4: DNS and SSL cutover. Step 5: registry update. Status gate: there is no cutover until verification passes.
03 — Working principles
Diagnose before changing.Keep the system understandable.Hand it back better, and documented.
Complexity is a cost
Automation should remove friction, not create it
Distinguish failure from zero
AI needs engineering discipline
05 — About
I'm Rasti Tkac, a senior developer based in Switzerland. I work with agencies and product teams as senior overflow capacity: the person you bring in when a PHP, WordPress or Laravel system is stuck, fragile, or overdue for automation. My background is as much operations as code: releases, migrations, recoveries, integrations.
Currently exploring:
- Agentic software workflows
- Production-ready AI-assisted development
- Better interfaces for complex tools
- Systems design for sustainable software
- Practical knowledge-management systems
Need senior capacity behind your brand?
I take on a small number of recurring agency engagements: escalations, maintenance, release reliability, and automation. Send a short written brief (stack, problem, urgency) and I'll reply in writing.