Available now: full-time or contract
Michael KuhlmanSan Diego, CARemote, hybrid or on-site
Senior Magento 2 & Adobe Commerce Lead Developer
About 20 years building software, Magento since 2012. At Event Network I led a team of five developers on 18 Magento 2 storefronts for museums, zoos and cultural attractions, including the Obama Foundation's official store, then led the company's migration to Shopify.
- Magento 2 storefronts on one codebase
- 18
- developers led at Event Network
- 5
- working in Magento since
- 2012
- years building software
- ~20
- Led the Obama Foundation's official store and the American Museum of Natural History's store, working directly with executive leadership at both
- Owned the release process for all 18 stores, and built the checkout regression suite that ran on staging before each release
- Before Event Network: built the supply-chain backend Taco Bell and KFC used worldwide for restaurant kitchen parts, from purchase orders to GPS-tracked ocean and inland freight to barcode and QR receiving
- Earlier: a 5/5 rating across thousands of billable hours on Elance (now Upwork), about 95% Magento 1 and 2, and a Magento development agency I founded and ran
- Click through the demo store I built three ways with the same catalog: Magento 2.4.9, headless Next.js and Shopify (password demo123), then see them measured head to head (how I built them)
Storefronts I've led development for
- Obama Foundation
- American Museum of Natural History
- Shedd Aquarium
- Denver Zoo
- National Gallery of Art
- Guggenheim
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Missouri Botanical Garden
- Mystic Seaport
Both the Obama Foundation's store and the American Museum of Natural History's store run on Shopify today, after the migration I led.
Case studies
Selected work
Services
What I do
I work as a lead developer inside your team, as a contractor alongside your agency, or directly for a merchant.
Adobe Commerce lead development
Custom modules, themes and multi-store / multi-website builds on a shared codebase. Checkout and payments, performance with Varnish, Redis, Elasticsearch and a CDN, security and SEO, across a portfolio of 18 live stores.
Magento → Shopify migration
Data-model mapping, SEO redirect maps, integrations and cutover. I led Event Network's move from Magento 2 to Shopify, plus Magento → Shopify migrations for other merchants, before and since Event Network.
Migration discovery audit
Before you commit a budget: what is actually in your Magento install, what maps cleanly to the target platform, what doesn't, and what it will take. You get a written plan you can execute with me or with anyone else.
Magento upgrades & security patching
Magento 2.4.x upgrades, security patches and Adobe Commerce feature work. Adobe Commerce 2.4.6 is in extended support until Aug 31, 2027, so the next move needs planning now.
Career
Experience
At a glance
- Role
- Senior / Lead Magento 2 & Adobe Commerce Developer
- Availability
- Available now, full-time or contract
- Location
- Pacific Beach, San Diego · remote, or hybrid / on-site in San Diego
- Led
- A team of five developers; 18 Magento 2 storefronts on one shared codebase
- Platforms
- Magento 2 & 1, Adobe Commerce, Magento Cloud, PWA Studio / GraphQL, Shopify
- Core stack
- PHP, MySQL / MariaDB, REST & GraphQL, Varnish, Redis, Elasticsearch, RabbitMQ, ERP / POS integrations, M2E Pro
- Dec 2025 - present
Independent Adobe Commerce & Shopify Consultant
Self-employed · San Diego, CA (remote)
Magento to Shopify migrations and eCommerce builds for merchants, with AI-assisted development as leverage.
- Mar 2021 - Dec 2025
Senior Lead Magento 2 Developer
Event Network · San Diego, CA
Led development on 18 Magento 2 storefronts for museums, zoos and cultural attractions, including the Obama Foundation's official store.
- 2020 - 2021
Backend Developer
Consulting engagement: Taco Bell & KFC supply-chain platform
Built the backend Taco Bell and KFC used worldwide to order, ship, track and receive replacement parts for their restaurant kitchens.
- Jan 2019 - Mar 2022
Co-founder & Full-Stack Engineer
CourseDuck.com (side venture)
Co-founded CourseDuck.com and built it end to end: PHP, a custom CMS, Python data pipelines and ML content ranking.
- 2012 - 2019
Magento Developer, Consultant & Agency Founder
Self-employed
Magento since 2012: a 5/5 rating across thousands of billable hours on Elance, enterprise clients with $10M+ annual revenue, Magento to Shopify migrations, a Magento development agency I founded and ran, and a week-long Magento training workshop in Houston, TX.
Cloud · Oct 30, 2026
Adobe Commerce on Cloud: dependency upgrades due Oct 30, 2026
On Adobe Commerce on Cloud, stores on 2.4.4 or 2.4.5 must upgrade all third-party dependencies (PHP, MariaDB, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Redis, RabbitMQ) by Oct 30, 2026. On 2.4.6 to 2.4.9 the deadline is Oct 30, 2026 or May 31, 2027, depending on the software. Environments that miss it have inbound traffic suspended, so the storefront goes offline. Adobe asked for a support ticket 30 days ahead; if you haven't opened one, contact Adobe Support or your account team now. Cloud only. (Adobe: required actions and deadlines)
Adobe Commerce 2.4.6 is in extended support until Aug 31, 2027 (standard support ended Aug 11, 2026); 2.4.5 and older are already past it. These dates are for Adobe Commerce. The choice is upgrade or replatform, and I've done both.
Which software is due when (Cloud only)
- Due Oct 30, 2026: MariaDB/Galera 10.5 and below (to 10.6 or later), Elasticsearch, any version (to OpenSearch 2.19 for 2.4.4 and 2.4.5; OpenSearch 3 for 2.4.6 and later), RabbitMQ 3.9 and below (to 3.13 or later).
- Due May 31, 2027: PHP 8.1 and below (to 8.2 or later), MariaDB above 10.5 and below 10.11 (to 10.11 or later), OpenSearch 1.x (to OpenSearch 2.19 for 2.4.4 and 2.4.5; OpenSearch 3 for 2.4.6 and later), Redis 5 and below (to Valkey 8 or later), RabbitMQ above 3.9 and below 3.13 (to 4.3 or later).
- On 2.4.4 or 2.4.5, every one of these is due Oct 30, 2026.
Source: Adobe: Required actions and deadlines to secure Commerce environments, Table 2. Last checked Oct 13, 2026.
Source: Adobe Commerce lifecycle policy · Last checked Oct 13, 2026
Process
How a project runs
- 01
Audit
Read the codebase, the extensions, the data and the integrations. Find out what the store really does, not what the documentation says.
- 02
Plan
Map the data model, the URLs and every integration to the target. Agree scope, order of work and what done means.
- 03
Build
Modules, themes, integrations and data migration, built and tested against real data, not samples.
- 04
Launch
A rehearsed cutover: freeze, final data sync, redirects live, DNS switch, checks.
- 05
Hypercare
Stay on after launch to watch orders, integrations and search traffic, and fix what shows up.
The edge
AI with guardrails: Atlas
The same review-and-release discipline I ran at Event Network, applied to AI-made changes. I built Atlas so non-technical owners can change their own sites safely. The owner describes a change in plain language; Claude Code makes it inside a sandboxed workspace that can only reach that client's site, and Codex reviews it. A person signs off, then pushes it to staging and on to production. Atlas runs in production on multiple enterprise eCommerce sites, each fully isolated from every other project, and deploys with zero downtime; about 1 in 100 releases uses a short, planned maintenance window.
It is built into the Magento 2 admin, so a super admin can change the development, staging or production site the same way, and it works for other platforms too. Every change is a git commit with one-click undo, and a scope guard stops the agent from touching anything outside its own site.
FAQ
Questions
Are you available, and for what kind of role?
Yes, now. I'm open to full-time senior or lead Magento / Adobe Commerce roles and to contract work. I'm based in Pacific Beach, San Diego, and work remotely or hybrid/on-site in San Diego.
Can you work as a contractor inside our agency?
Yes. I founded and ran a Magento development agency myself, so I know how agency delivery works: your process, your client, your standards. I can lead a Magento or Adobe Commerce build, take a migration workstream, or handle an audit.
Adobe Commerce or Magento Open Source?
Both. I've worked on Magento 1 and 2, Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce, including Magento Cloud and headless builds with PWA Studio and GraphQL. My own demo store runs a headless Next.js front end on Magento GraphQL: headless.michael-kuhlman.com.
Is Magento 2.4.6 still supported?
On Adobe Commerce, yes: it is in extended support (at no additional cost) until August 31, 2027, then security-only fixes until May 31, 2028. Standard support ended August 11, 2026. These dates are for Adobe Commerce. Either way it is time to plan an upgrade to 2.4.8 or later, or a replatform.
Do you only do Magento?
Magento and Adobe Commerce are my core. I also work in Shopify: I led Event Network's move of its storefronts for museums, zoos and cultural attractions from Magento 2 to Shopify.
How do you use AI in client work?
As an accelerator, never unsupervised. I use Claude Code and multi-model APIs to move faster, and I stay accountable for every change that reaches your codebase. Atlas, the platform I built, works the same way: a second model reviews every change, a person approves it, and it goes to staging before production.
Contact
Let's talk
Hiring? Send me the role: I'm available now, full-time or contract.
Agency or CTO? Send the workstream (build, migration, upgrade or audit). I founded and ran a Magento development agency myself, so I work to your process.
Merchant on 2.4.6 or Adobe Commerce Cloud? Send your version, edition and hosting, and I'll tell you what is due when.
- Phone
- 707-540-1336
- Location
- Pacific Beach, San Diego, CA