I spend my days inside broken checkouts. I like it there.
I'm Shameem Reza, a Happiness Engineer at Automattic working on WooCommerce. I help WooCommerce merchants when things break, review plugins for WordPress.org and WooCommerce.com, and contribute to WordPress core.
How I got here
I started as a freelancer on Upwork and Elance, building custom themes, plugins, WooCommerce stores, and payment integrations for clients around the world. I left Top Rated with a 100% Job Success score, but the lesson that stayed was bigger than any project: a broken store costs its owner rent money, staff wages, and sleep.
That lesson brought me to Automattic as a Happiness Engineer. I take the WooCommerce cases that need both product knowledge and code: subscription renewals that fail silently, payment gateways that stop mid-launch, and checkouts that break after a routine update. What merchants tell me in tickets goes back to the product teams.
The problems I kept seeing turned into things I build. HappyAccess gives support temporary admin access without sharing a password, SnipDrop packs the snippets I kept rewriting, andLarder and Kairo are free themes. Today I'm a WordPress core contributor, credited in WordPress 7.1.1, and I review plugin submissions for the WordPress.org Plugins Team and the WooCommerce.com Marketplace.
Home is Khulna, Bangladesh, with my wife and son. On days off, you'll usually find us at our family farm, where we grow vegetables, raise fish, and keep a few cows.
What I know well
Ecommerce on WordPress is home. I know WooCommerce and the extensions merchants call about most: Subscriptions, Bookings, Memberships, Product Bundles, AutomateWoo, and payments through WooPayments, Stripe, and PayPal. I also answer in the WordPress.org forums for WooCommerce, WooPayments, Stripe, PayPal Payments, and Google for WooCommerce.
On the code side, I work in PHP and the WordPress APIs every day, with JavaScript, TypeScript, React, REST APIs, and MySQL when a fix needs them. Reviewing plugins added a second skill: reading someone else's code for security, coding standards, directory guidelines, accessibility, and admin UX. On WordPress.org, I'm also a theme author, pattern author, and translation contributor.
I hold a BSc in Computer Science and a Postgraduate Certificate in Project Management. And I use AI the way I use any tool: my own Claude Code skills carry my review checklists and debugging habits, and Heya, my local-first support agent, reproduces a bug on a throwaway site before I answer.
Life outside the tickets
Family, the farm, and the places we go.
How I think
- Investigate before answering.Trace every claim to something real: the logs, the plugin's code, an official doc.
- A five-minute fix beats a clever one.Most store owners don't have a developer on call, so the fix has to be one they can apply themselves.
- Impossible bugs are ordinary bugs, stacked.Most "impossible" bugs are three ordinary ones on top of each other. Patience finds them one at a time.
- If it needs a second read, it isn't finished.Clear writing is part of the fix.
Let's talk WordPress.
No paid work, just good conversation. Bring a plugin idea, a WooCommerce UX question, or a review you're stuck on.