Michael Kuhlman

Service

Adobe Commerce lead developer, full-time or contract

Senior Adobe Commerce and Magento 2 lead developer in San Diego. Custom modules, multi-store, performance, checkout, ERP/POS integrations. Available now, full-time or as an Adobe Commerce contractor.

Diagram: eighteen storefronts on one Magento 2 / Adobe Commerce codebase, with caching and search, marketplaces, ERP, point of sale and shipping integrations, and a migration path to Shopify.18 STOREFRONTS · ONE CODEBASEMagento 2ADOBE COMMERCEVARNISHREDISELASTICSEARCHCDNMARKETPLACESM2E ProSHOPIFYMIGRATIONERPsystem of recordPOSin-storeSHIPPINGfulfillmentINVENTORY · ORDERS · FULFILLMENT IN SYNC

I lead Magento 2 and Adobe Commerce teams: custom modules, multi-store, performance, checkout and ERP/POS integrations. Available now, full-time or contract.

From 2021 to 2025 I was Senior Lead Magento 2 Developer at Event Network, leading a team of about 5 developers on 18 storefronts for museums, zoos and cultural attractions, including the Obama Foundation's official store and the American Museum of Natural History's. I owned the Git workflow, pull-request review and every deployment. I've been building software for about 20 years, and working in Magento since 2012.

What I lead

Architecture and custom development. Custom Magento modules and extensions, themes built on Luma/Blank and UI components, and multi-store / multi-website configurations on a shared codebase. Headless builds with PWA Studio and GraphQL.

Upgrades and security. Magento and Adobe Commerce upgrades, security patches and Adobe Commerce feature work. With 2.4.6 in extended support only until August 31, 2027, upgrade planning is on most roadmaps right now.

Performance. Varnish, Redis, Elasticsearch and CDN configuration, profiling with New Relic, and hosting on AWS and Magento Cloud.

Checkout, payments and marketplaces. Payment gateway integrations, checkout, shipping and fulfillment, and Amazon / eBay marketplace sync through M2E Pro.

Integrations. ERP and POS integrations over REST and GraphQL that keep inventory, orders and fulfillment in sync across in-store and online. How I built them at Event Network.

SEO. Technical SEO for Magento: URL structure, rewrites, canonical handling, and redirects when things move.

Ways to work with me

  • Full-time. A senior or lead Magento / Adobe Commerce role on your team, remote or hybrid / on-site in San Diego.
  • Contract, inside your agency. I ran a Magento agency myself, so I work to your process and your client relationship. I can lead a build, take a workstream, or rescue one that's in trouble.
  • Contract, direct to a merchant. An Adobe Commerce contractor for a defined piece of work: an upgrade, an integration, a performance problem, an audit or a Magento to Shopify migration.

Background

  • Event Network, 2021–2025. Senior Lead Magento 2 Developer. Led a team of about 5 developers on 18 Magento 2 storefronts, including the Obama Foundation's official store and the American Museum of Natural History's; owned the release process, the ERP/POS integrations and the company's migration from Magento 2 to Shopify.
  • CourseDuck.com, 2019–2022. Co-founder and the only engineer: PHP, a custom CMS, Python data pipelines and ML content ranking.
  • Magento freelancer, consultant and agency founder, 2012–2019. A 5/5 rating across thousands of billable hours on Elance, enterprise consulting for clients with $10M+ annual revenue, a Magento agency I founded, and a week-long Magento training workshop in Houston, TX.
  • Independent, 2025–present. Adobe Commerce and Shopify consulting, with AI-assisted development as leverage.

AI as leverage, with guardrails

I use Claude Code and multi-model APIs as leverage on real engineering work, with every change reviewed. I also built Atlas, a platform that runs coding agents inside strictly sandboxed, per-client workspaces. On an Adobe Commerce team that means I move faster on the routine work and I'm careful about what an AI tool is allowed to touch.

Stack

Magento 2 & 1, Adobe Commerce, PWA Studio, GraphQL · PHP (OOP), MySQL / MariaDB, PostgreSQL, REST, RabbitMQ, Composer, Laravel · Varnish, Redis, Elasticsearch, CDN, New Relic, AWS, Magento Cloud, Docker, Linux, CI/CD · Knockout.js, RequireJS, TypeScript, React, LESS / SASS · Shopify, WordPress / WooCommerce · Git, Agile / Scrum.

Questions

Are you available right now? Yes. I'm available now for full-time roles and contract work.

Do you work on Magento Open Source as well as Adobe Commerce? Yes, both, and Magento 1 as well. The code base is largely shared; the differences are in licensed features, Cloud hosting and Adobe's support terms.

Can you work on-site? I'm in Pacific Beach, San Diego. I work remotely with teams anywhere and can be hybrid or on-site in San Diego.

We're on 2.4.6. How urgent is it? Standard support ended on August 11, 2026 and extended support ends on August 31, 2027, after which 2.4.6 gets security-only fixes until May 31, 2028 (Adobe lifecycle policy, last checked Sep 25, 2026). Plan the upgrade now rather than in summer 2027.

Working together

  1. Email the brief: your version, catalog size and integrations.
  2. A 30-minute call to go through it together.
  3. A written, fixed-scope proposal.

Hiring for an Adobe Commerce lead?

Send me the role or the project. I'll reply with what I'd need to know and whether I'm a fit.

Email me · Call 707-540-1336 · Download résumé

Available now · full-time or contract

Need a senior Magento lead? Let’s talk.

Email me Call 707-540-1336Résumé PDF