Bump Name Match | Rob Erskine

Experience

6/2023 — Present

Principal Architect - Amdocs Studios

Empowered enterprise clients including Rogers Communications, Southwest Airlines, and DreamWorks Animation to adopt AI in order to drive greater efficiency, creativity, at operational scale. Designed and deployed agentic harnesses, optimized token usage to reduce inference costs, built reusable tools and skills, and connected disparate systems via Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations

10/2021 — 6/2023

Managing Architect - Projekt202

Led a team of developers building next-generation CMS solutions for clients including Steamship Authority, Wasabi Technologies, Double Good, Blink Charging, and Boston Medical Center, leveraging headless architecture, microservices, and the JAMstack to deliver fast, scalable, and maintainable digital platforms.

4/2019 — 10/2021

VP, Director of Creative Technology - Hill Holliday

Promoted to run select Retail accounts and all Healthcare accounts for Hill Holliday and Hill Holliday Health. Oversee digital projects and products from start to finish. Responsibilities include staffing, scoping, researching, and approving third-party vendors, development partners, and working closely with internal teams to launch projects on time and within budget. Responsible for growing the creative technology team and direct report's career paths. I also need to keep up with evolving technologies, as well as be responsible for bringing innovative problem solving and solutions to clients.

5/2017 — 4/2019

Lead Creative Technologist - Hill Holliday

I led internal as well as external projects, teams, and initiatives for clients like Bank of America, Harvard Pilgrim, and a complete rebuild of PartyCity.com that led to a 16% increase in conversion. I also built out incremental updates, accessibility, SEO, and page speed/performance practices, and (my personal favorite) scalable design systems for clients. Work with creative, strategy, analytics, and other teams on implementing best practices and efficiencies, with a focus on all steps in the user journey.

11/2014 — 4/2017

Senior Creative Technologist - Hill Holliday

Develop, manage, and tech lead projects as well as mentor multiple junior team members in an agile environment. Saw projects for clients like John Hancock, the JM Smucker Company, and Novartis through from its inception all the way to post-launch updates; including managing repositories, deployments to different environments, maintaining high code quality, analytically driven decisions, all while promoting a fun and engaging team morale.

7/2012 — 11/2014

Freelance Developer

Connelly Partners — Worked on front-end and back-end applications with other developers and creatives at Connelly Partners in Boston, MA. I worked with clients like Cayan, MassVacation, Nexaplus, Stowe Mountain Resort, and Wellness Pet Food.

Hubspot — Worked within a small internal project team for one of Hubspot’s products, Signals. I created and developed advertising collateral, mostly in the form of personalized landing pages, used to A/B test, and measure signups within their own CRM system.

11/2011 — 11/2012

Front-End Developer - 38 Studios

Worked within a highly disciplined agile team to conceptualize, design, and develop intuitive web suites for 38 Studios’ flagship products, interactive IP sites, mobile games, and digital platforms. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning has a Metacritic score of 81/100.

9/2009 — 6/2012

Johnson & Wales University - Student

Graduated from Johnson & Wales University's school of engineering and design with a 3.9 GPA with a concentration in web technologies. I competed in the National Student Advertising Campaign all 3 years and placed 4th and 3rd in the country, as well as a best Plansbook award for Nissan. I also competed in the DECA web design competition where I won nationals two times in a row. Lastly, I won the university's President's trophy during my senior year.

Awards

12/2019

Champion for Good - Ad Council

I was honored to be featured by the Ad Council in their Champion for Good series. I've worked on numerous Ad Council campaigns and also serve on their UX Advisory Committee.

2017

Communication Arts - Interactive Competition Winner

Work for Edward M. Kennedy Institute was one of ten featured in the CommArts Interactive 2017 print issue along with an interview with me and the Creative Director on the project.

2016

CodePen Spark

Article on data, analytics, and incremental updates was featured in the first-ever CodePen Spark newsletter, sent to over 75,000 users:

2014

Gold Hatchbowls

Social campign for Necco Candy: #TweetHearts. Direct Response. Product Innovation. We built a Twitter bot and Web application that printed your tweets on heart wafers and shipped them directly to you. It absolutely blew up on Buzzfeed.

Passion Projects

2018

Blackdog Brewing Co

I started home-brewing my own beer. I've developed over 60 batches ranging from IPAs (well, mostly IPAs), amber ales, and even a few porters and stouts. The latter of which I've developed into a yearly New Years tradition. I'll brew a bourbon stout on January 1st, and then pop it open 364 days later to celebrate. Hit me up and i'll gladly share with you :)

2018

BFMW

Established an LLC with a few close friends to design and develop digital products and solutions for small businesses and non-profits in New England.

2015

BaeBot

A super lovely significant other SMS chatbot to text you back when no one else will. Picked up on BostInno, Twilio’s Developer blog, and other publications. https://baebot.biz

2014

CowsayPLZ

A really dumb node.js bot that replicates every developer’s favorite terminal mammal. It printed philosophical messages out of an chat bubble from an ACII art cow. Utilized sentiment analysis (before AI was cool) to customize the cow's mood.

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Naming a tiny human is a lot of pressure. It's the first thing you ever give them, and they're stuck with it for, you know, forever (no pressure).

When my wife and I were preparing to welcome our first daughter into the world, it was so uninspiring using the existing tools that were out there. We're having a baby! This should be fun and exciting!

So I built Bump Name Match. You swipe right on the baby names you love and left on the ones you don't, and when you and your partner both swipe right on the same name, it's a match. 💕

Naming is a two-person job

A baby name list is built for one person scrolling. But you're (usually) not picking a name alone, and the real work is finding the names you both love. [NEEDS ROB: the actual problem you hit, if any — e.g. how you and your partner were trading names before this.]

Dating apps figured out "do we both like this?" a long time ago: swipe, and only find out when it's mutual. That felt like the right shape for this too. [NEEDS ROB: confirm dating apps were the inspiration, or swap in the real one.]

Swipe, match, repeat

Pick a gender (girl, boy, or neutral) and an origin, and the names start dealing out like cards. Each card shows the name's meaning and origin, so you're not just judging on vibes. Swipe left, swipe right, and let the app keep score.

It's a website, so it works right in your phone's browser.

You and your partner can share an account, or link two separate accounts with a unique invite code.

17,492 baby names to swipe through: 7,712 for girls, 6,296 for boys, and 3,484 gender-neutral.

Every name gets its own page

Behind the swiping there's a full name directory. You can browse by gender or origin, or search names and meanings (handy when you know you want something that means "light" but not much else).

Each name gets its own page with its meaning, origin, tags, alternative spellings, and nicknames. [NEEDS ROB: where the name, meaning, and origin data came from. Some descriptions read AI-written; if they are, that's worth a line about how you did it.]

Popularity, straight from the source

Name pages chart the name's US popularity ranking by year, using Social Security Administration data. You also get its best rank, how many babies got that name, and how many years it spent in the top 100 and top 1000.

It's a super handy gut check. Aaliyah, for example, peaked at #36 in 2012, and 107,420 babies have gotten the name, so you'll know what you're getting into before you commit. [NEEDS ROB: stack details worth naming — it's a Next.js app; what about hosting, database, and auth?]

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How it's going

With over 800 account sign ups and over 3,500 names swiped, as of June 2026, I have been thrilled with the results.

Bump Name Match is free and ad-supported, and you can decline personalized ads right from the cookie banner.

I'd like to thank my wife for being such a good sport in putting up with my endless questions for user feedback and testing. I love you!

If you're expecting and stuck on a name, give it a swipe. And if you need help building an app like this, I'd love to help out. Feel free to reach out.