Daniel Gonzalez studied economics, which probably seems like a detour for someone who ended up as a Project Manager managing software projects and overseeing translations for a web hosting company. It wasn’t though.
“Economics is about structure,” he explains. “You put something in to make something out. Like a machine. You have to understand how that machine works, organize it, and align the different stakeholders.” He applies that framework to everything at DreamHost: the domain team modernization he leads, the translation operations he’s quietly built across the company, and even how he thinks about DreamHost’s expansion into new markets.
He’s been here nearly five years, since 2021, which means he joined during the pandemic when remote work was already the default. But his path to tech started much earlier, in childhood, actually, tinkering with websites and learning that behind every site was hosting, and behind that were domains, and behind all of it was a business worth understanding.
What a Project Manager Actually Does
Gonzalez’s primary role as a project manager is leading DreamHost’s Domains team through a major code modernization and new domain features development. That means running standups, identifying blockers, keeping scope clear and timelines realistic. He facilitates planning sessions, leads retrospectives where the team figures out what worked and what didn’t, and connects the dots between different parts of the organization so nothing falls through cracks.
The Domains team is undergoing a fundamental rebuild designed to make everything faster and more maintainable. “We want better products, better user experience,” he says. “We want to make sure people don’t have issues when managing or buying a domain.”
His economics background is what makes him different. He thinks in systems. That’s partly why leadership also tapped him to run DreamHost’s translation operations. The work here goes deeper than swapping words. “You’re matching the right marketing to the right places, selling the right products to the right people,” he explains.
Three Languages, One Strategic Mission
Gonzalez speaks Spanish, English, and German fluently. His translation work started operationally by helping teams match style guides, keeping terminology consistent across languages. Over time it became the strategic backbone for how DreamHost reaches different geographies.
“We’re getting the word out outside English-speaking countries,” he says. Most of his day involves attending standup meetings and working through blockers on Domains-related projects, but the translations piece is where he sees the bigger picture.
What “Be Irreverent and Fun” Actually Looks Like
When asked about a moment that made him proudest to work here, Gonzalez points to a recent organizational migration to ClickUp, a SaaS project management platform. On paper, that sounds mundane. In practice, it was a company-wide change that could’ve gone sideways.
“Everyone got to say something, even if they weren’t in favor of it,” he explains. “We gathered all the different opinions and built this huge community around the change. That was valuable not just for my department, but for the whole company.”
DreamHost’s core value in action is to be irreverent and fun. Gonzalez breaks it down plainly: people speak up freely when something’s wrong. You can trust everybody, and if you fail, you’re backed up.
He also channels his learning instinct into a side project of building websites, SaaS products, and metaverse experiences with a friend he’s known since preschool. “It keeps me learning what’s actually happening in tech,” he says. “You see AI shifting how we do things, and I feel that change here at work and there.”
The Constant: Structure and Discipline
Off work, Gonzalez is reliable about two things. The gym, every day, either early or after work. He prefers group classes because he gets a chance to hang out with people instead of just running through his routine.
The other is cooking. Remote work gave him more time in the kitchen, and it’s become his reset. “You’re hands-on, very concentrated on something completely different,” he says. “Then there’s that expectation of wanting this to be as delicious as it looks in whatever video you watched.”
He and his girlfriend, Daniela (yes, same name), spend their free time cooking together and planning travel. His dream includes a month in Europe working and exploring places like Barcelona, Valencia, London, Iceland, Budapest, and Croatia.
Gonzalez builds towards his dreams similarly to the way he manages projects: with structure and intention. His side projects explore emerging tech. His day job involves modernizing DreamHost’s domain name infrastructure and building on DreamHost’s international foundations. His translation work provides the backbone of how the company reaches new markets. The gym routine, the cooking, and the languages are all deliberate investments in understanding how things work at different scales.
“I feel like that structure is key to get away with projects,” he says. And for Gonzalez, having structure is how you actually move toward something that matters.
Want to work with people like Daniel Gonzalez? Check out our careers page and discover what else makes DreamHost’s culture so special. Next month, meet our Learning & Development Specialist, a former English teacher who now helps DreamHost teams grow, and unwinds with diamond painting, reality TV, and a house full of furry companions.