Adam Tyner - Senior PHP/MySQL Engineer and Technical Product Lead
As you could surely guess from the domain name and <h1> above, my name is Adam, and I'm a seasoned software engineer and product-focused leader with 26 years of experience building web platforms, APIs, bespoke content management systems, workflow automation, and essentially everything that powers USA TODAY 10BEST.
In my current role, I work across the stack, from architecture and backend development to managing our AWS infrastructure, building analytics dashboards, coding APIs and stakeholder tools, and cross-team product execution.
Few things make me happier than solving challenging operational problems, building tools to reduce friction for editorial colleagues and end users alike, and swiftly transforming complex business needs into web apps that are powerful, intuitive, extensible, and secure.
What I Do
I'm responsible for all things technical for USA TODAY 10BEST, including architecting and coding the proprietary APIs that power our front-ends, building stakeholder-facing dashboards and photo management tools, building and maintaining an exceptionally powerful, bespoke content management system, managing syndication feeds and partner integrations, overseeing our AWS infrastructure (EC2 / S3 / RDS), building analytics dashboards and report suites, product design, and project management.
Over the years, I've built white-label travel guide applications for most every hotel brand you could name, constructed tools for managing the translation of copy for large, complex partner websites, built an image management system supporting some 300,000 photos, and most recently have been the principal architect and developer of the Readers' Choice Awards products for 10BEST and USA TODAY Sports.
I also work closely with numerous teams across USA TODAY, including Application Operations, Advertising Operations, Data Collection, Brand and Network Marketing, Site Reliability Engineering, Platform Engineering, Cloud Infrastructure and Enablement, Shopping, Sports, and the Privacy Office.
Readers' Choice Awards
I architected and coded the Readers' Choice Awards products for 10BEST and USA TODAY Sports, which have amassed tens of millions of votes since the program's inception. This effort encompasses both the CMS tools that empower our small team as well as the APIs that drive the front-end, powerful fraud detection, automated email outreach to more than 12,000 stakeholders annually via a proprietary API and Power Automate, newsletter subscription integration, and robust reporting suites. An exhaustive list would double the length of this page, but among the other highlights are building tools to normalize incoming nominations from subject matter experts, automated assignment creation, and single-click data sourcing that encompasses addresses, phone numbers, geocoding, and partner integration.
Editorial Workflow Automation
Saving multiple work weeks a month for 10BEST's editorial staff, I moved the entirety of the content creation process into our CMS: fielding freelancer-submitted pitches, automating email sends for assignments that our contributors can accept or reject, email notifications to confirm that assignments are completed on time, automated validation to ensure that submitted work meets minimum requirements, built tools to significantly reduce the level of effort in affiliatizing content, and streamlined invoice generation.
Newsletter Creation Tools
I developed a drag-and-drop interface to generate newsletters for 10BEST's hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of subscribers. The foundation of a newsletter send can be constructed in literally seconds. I also conducted comparative analysis and redesigned 10BEST's newsletter, resulting in immediate gains in engagement.
AI-Lead Efficiencies
I spearheaded integration of LLMs throughout 10BEST's CMS for efficiencies. The primary goal is to make the most of team members' hours, reducing the time they spend on mundane, repetitive tasks like data normalization and sourcing addresses so that they can focus on their primary skills instead.
Cross-Property Contributions
Working with teams across USA TODAY, I've constructed libraries to feed images and content from external sources directly into the parent company's in-house CMS, coded an API to generate Adaptive Cards on Teams for internal amplification, built a Power Automate flow for LocaliQ to circumvent restrictions on including attachments with mail merge sends, led analytics efforts across USA TODAY properties for Google Web Stories, automated reporting for several USA TODAY Sports sites, built a proprietary CMS and supporting APIs for USA TODAY's location-based Destinate pilot, and supported The Greenville News by automating the importing and processing of real estate transactions, crime reports, and jail records.
Core Strengths
- Full-stack engineering with PHP, MySQL / MariaDB, JavaScript, and a bit of Python
- Working primarily at the UNIX command line
- Backend architecture, APIs, CMS design, workflow tools, and content syndication
- Documentation, analytics, and reporting
- Product-minded problem solving focused on efficiency, reliability, and maintainability
- Cross-team collaboration
- Experience leading project design and leading offshore front-end developers
More About Me
But wait! I'm not all dry, technical details. Some fun facts about me:
- I have a voracious appetite for movies and still avidly collect Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray releases on-disc – 4,315 titles strong at this point. I wrote a column about schlock cinema for High Def Digest, wrote technically-oriented reviews for DVD Talk for 23 years, and basically built a house with Dolby Atmos / DTS:X in mind.
- Among my claims to Z-list celebrity are founding the first-ever Masters of the Universe fansite 31 years ago, which has since evolved into he-man.org. This led to me being a panelist at Power-Con 2017, being drawn into a mini-comic, and thanked in more books and DVDs than I can count.
- I collect oddball instruments and effect pedals. My office is decked out with a bank of Moog synthesizers, an Etherwave theremin, an electric kazoo, the same model of ring modulator they use for the Dalek voices on Doctor Who, a Korg Miku, and an Earthquaker Rainbow Machine, among many, many others.
- Undeterred by my lack of musical ability, I recorded a song for a They Might Be Giants tribute album, which somehow won out over actual bands. I've been featured on a few other compilation albums and have gotten more radio play than you might think, and now that I'm finally taking bass guitar lessons, maybe there's more in the wings.
- I graduated from Clemson University (B.S., Comp Sci with an applications emphasis in Business) and loved Upstate South Carolina enough that I never really left. I've been in the Greenville area for 26 years since, and while I haven't quite met my goal of eating at every BBQ joint in town, I'm very close.
Contact Me
If you're working on a project that would benefit from strong engineering judgment, end-to-end ownership, and someone who enjoys building tools that make teams more effective, please drop me a line. Even better if it's an opportunity where software engineering overlaps with product thinking, workflow design, publishing systems, data, or internal platform work.
And if you're just looking for someone to talk about old tokusatsu TV shows, nerd-rock, or importing cult cinema in 4K, that would be great too. I'm not on social media much anymore, but you can find me on LinkedIn or send me an email using the form below: