We wish a warm welcome to Rick Butterfield, a well-known and respected member of the global Umbraco community, Umbraco Certified Master, and Umbraco MVP, who joins the Wattle development team as Lead Software Engineer.
We're delighted to welcome Rick Butterfield as our new Lead Software Engineer. He brings over 13 years experience in the industry, with an impressive track record of developing website solutions leveraging Umbraco. As a member of the Umbraco Sustainability Team, Rick is passionate about using technology to make a positive impact.
I join Wattle as Lead Software Engineer to help with projects, particularly those involving Umbraco website builds. I work across multiple technology stacks, including C#, .NET, SQL, and Umbraco as well as HTML, CSS / Sass, JS / ES6+, and Node.
I'm really excited to start collaborating with my Wattle colleagues and contributing to delivering high-quality website solutions for our membership organisation clients.
My Umbraco journey began on version 4 back in 2011 at a housing association, where I learned about the CMS platform. Since then, I've worked with Umbraco in every role. I started getting more involved with the wider Umbraco community back in 2019 when the CMS moved to Microsoft .NET Core. Since then I've contributed to packages that extend the functionality of Umbraco, written numerous blog posts, and heavily participated in Slack discussions and meetups. In June 2023, I was awarded the title Umbraco MVP and I also joined the Umbraco Sustainability Team.
The Umbraco Sustainability Team is a community-driven initiative to promote sustainability within the Umbraco ecosystem. We're working on improving documentation, creating packages like the Sustainability Package, which allows developers and content editors to run sustainability benchmarks within their websites, and raising awareness about how we can all contribute to a more sustainable digital world.
I'm most excited about projects that have a real impact and social value – projects that make a difference in people's lives. Working with membership organisations, nonprofits, and charities is particularly exciting because it's all about helping people and doing something that matters.
I got married about 18 months ago and recently moved into a new home, which was fantastic as it was a show home! I enjoy going out with friends, eating and drinking (probably too much!). I also play the drums and love teaching myself new things.
