Hi, I’m Tom Rose — a freelance web developer based in Philadelphia with over 20 years of experience. I help organizations build fast, accessible websites using modern front-end development. I care deeply about web standards, clean code, and keeping things simple. My goal is to create sites that present content clearly, load quickly, and are easy for people to use.
I primarily work from my home office in West Philadelphia, but I’m always happy to collaborate onsite when possible. I value face-to-face interaction and building transparent, long-term relationships with clients. When I take on a project, I aim to work alongside an organization to understand its goals and culture so I can provide thoughtful guidance and support.
While my focus is writing solid front-end code, I also contribute to design decisions, accessibility strategy, performance optimization, and overall user experience. This collaborative approach has allowed me to work with many great organizations over the years.
Outside of web projects, I enjoy exploring Philadelphia with my wife and son, listening to music, baking sourdough bread, and watching baseball.
Skills and tools
I frequently use WordPress as a content management system, building custom themes by hand with a focus on simplicity and usability — both for content editors and end users. Powering roughly 43% of the web, WordPress remains a dependable and widely trusted CMS.
I also develop custom themes and modules for HubSpot CMS, helping marketing teams manage content more efficiently while maintaining strong performance and design consistency.
Increasingly, I’m interested in Jamstack architectures — particularly pairing WordPress with fast front-end frameworks like Astro. This headless approach offers meaningful performance and security benefits. (This site, for example, is built using WordPress, GraphQL, and Astro 🚀.)
Technologies I work with regularly
WordPress (custom themes, headless builds)
HubSpot CMS (themes & custom modules)
HTML, CSS, Sass, Styled Components
JavaScript (ES6+), SVG animation
Astro, Gatsby, Eleventy
GraphQL & REST APIs
PHP, Timber/Twig
Gulp, Git
MySQL