Jonathan Hodges
Jon Richards
Solutions Architect
Jordan Phillips
Nucleus Support Production Manager

Jonathan Hodges serves as the Director of Classy Llama. Jonathan oversees the success of Classy Llama. In his time with Classy Llama he has managed the technical implementation of many Magento projects and has consulted on numerous others. He received his B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science from Evangel University, has been programming in PHP professionally for more than 9 years. He has served as a mentor across the Classy Llama software engineering team and is a Magento Certified Developer Plus, Magento Certified Solutions Specialist, and a Zend Certified Engineer.

Get to know Jonathan

Things I Love:

God, my family, learning, leadership, programming, electronics, ice cream, long walks, parks, audiobooks, flying my trick kite, hanging out with friends

Things I Hate:

Laziness, Whininess, Complaining, Passiveness

Favorite Places:

The beach, home, family’s house

My Family:

My wife and I are enjoying watching our children grow and learn. We enjoy spending time with friends and throwing parties at our house. We love video games, board games, books, and going for walks.

Favorite Quote:

“Do you see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings; He will not stand before unknown men.” Proverbs 22:29 (NKJV)

Jonathan's Blog Posts
February 17, 2015
Agile Software Development at Classy Llama
By Jonathan Hodges in Development on February 17, 2015

Agile Software Development at Classy Llama

What is Agile? Agile has become a very common term within the software development industry. So what is agile? Some of the concepts of agile software […]
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November 18, 2014
Debugging Complex Problems
By Jonathan Hodges in Development on November 18, 2014

Debugging Complex Problems

Recently, I posted about avoiding common coding problems. These practices can help to reduce debugging overall time. Even after common coding issues have been reduced, you are often […]
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August 25, 2014
Avoiding Coding Errors
By Jonathan Hodges in Development on August 25, 2014

Avoiding Coding Errors

These techniques cover quite a broad range of problems and show some good practices for debugging common Magento problems. I am going to cover some common […]
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Jonathan's Recommendations
Erik Hansen
Erik Hansen
Lead Engineer / Team Director
at Classy Llama

Jonathan is one of the sharpest software engineers I’ve worked with, has a great mind for business, is an excellent development team manager, and has the heart of a teacher.

Jonathan is great at creating well-architected solutions to solve business objectives. He’s a detail-oriented, thorough, and fast developer. He is a master of Magento 1 and 2 development.

Not only is Jonathan great at software development, he also has a great business analyst mindset and effectively balances business objectives with technical objectives.

Jonathan built a Magento 2 development training program for Classy Llama’s development team that effectively brought the team up-to-speed on that platform. He’s always quick to stop what he’s doing to help one of his team members with a problem.

I’ve been fortunate to work with Jonathan for over five years. He is a man of character and I trust him implicitly.

Carrie Weidenbach-1
Carrie Weidenbach
VP of eCommerce
at E7 Solutions, LLC

Jonathan is an exceptional Manager of Development. Not only does he care about each and every employee on his team and work to improve their skills, he’s constantly honing his own. He is also extremely bright and driven. It is a pleasure to work with Jonathan.

Rob Tull
Head of Solutions / Team Director
at Classy Llama

I have been working with Jonathan for several years in varying capacities at Classy Llama. Jonathan is an excellent developer with strong skills in advanced Magento software engineering and debugging. Jonathan can also train other developers and provide good guidance to a team. Jonathan is honest, open, and often shares good feedback with peers and leaders. Jonathan’s skills and leadership have been a powerful asset during his time at Classy Llama and it has been an honor to work closely with an engineer and individual of his skill.

Daniel Nettleton of Espresso Parts
Daniel Nettleton
eCommerce Manager
at Espresso Parts

It is difficult to find a developer who is competent, personable and can interact with other developers and clients in an efficient, productive manner. I have enjoyed working with Jonathan because he exhibits the knowledge and professionalism necessary to fulfill all these ideal qualities. I trust Jonathan to work with me on an efficient solution to a problem, or to hand a project completely over to him and know that I’m getting the best solution possible. I would be hard-pressed to find a developer who could inspire my confidence in such a way as he does.

Tom Page from Asychrony Labs
Tom Page
Software Engineer
at Asynchrony Labs

If you are considering an opportunity to work for Jonathan he will help you find and develop your strengths, provide lift to your technical knowledge, and empower you to use them. If you are considering Jonathan’s work by itself; he will deliver on his own technical and managerial responsibilities while providing leadership to teams and individuals.

When I came to Classy Llama, where Jonathan was the Director of Development, I had no training or experience on the LAMP stack. Jonathan trained me efficiently with respect, humor, and grace. He helped me build on what I already knew, showed me how to efficiently find my own answers in Magento, and even helped me find and develop qualities in myself that continue to lead to personal and professional growth.

As an engineer, Jonathan is more than capable. He is an expert at Magento 1 and 2. When team leads with years of experience were stuck they would go to Jonathan for technical answers and for creative solutions. Without any WordPress experience, Jonathan guided me to the solution of several difficult WordPress theme-related bugs and features.

Rather than simply providing the answer he always made the extra effort to guide me to find a correct answer myself. This not only produced an efficient solution for our clients, it also provided training, established confidence, competence, and pride. Under his leadership, our teams regularly delivered high quality, technically challenging work to high customer satisfaction within tight time and budget constraints. He has an uncanny ability to bring the best out in everyone with whom he works.