A live client website needs someone who treats its ongoing health as a full-time responsibility, not a background task squeezed between projects. This role exists to own that responsibility: managing a portfolio of live WordPress sites, keeping them healthy, performant, and secure, while also taking on ad hoc development and project-based work as it comes up.
The majority of the day-to-day work here is maintenance-focused — updates, monitoring, troubleshooting, optimization — but the role also calls for real backend development skill: custom theme work, plugin customization, and PHP-based solutions when a site needs more than routine upkeep.
This role is for someone who enjoys:
- Owning the ongoing health of live sites, not just shipping and moving on
- Diagnosing and fixing backend issues quickly and cleanly
- Balancing steady maintenance work with occasional custom development
- Working independently across multiple concurrent client sites
If you’re someone who takes pride in a portfolio of sites that just quietly work, and who’s equally comfortable writing custom PHP when needed, this role gives you both halves of that.
- Own the ongoing health of a portfolio of live client websites
- Perform routine core, plugin, and theme updates across all managed sites
- Monitor uptime, manage environments, and proactively identify issues before they escalate
- Diagnose and resolve backend issues, plugin conflicts, PHP errors, and performance bottlenecks
- Work across staging and production environments with minimal turnaround time
- Provide clear documentation of issues identified and resolutions applied
- Implement and enforce security best practices across all client sites
- Conduct performance audits and optimize load times
- Apply caching strategies and database optimization techniques as required
- Build and customize WordPress themes and plugins using PHP, hooks, filters, and actions
- Write clean, well-documented, and standards-compliant code for both new builds and existing sites
- Implement customizations based on requirements received from PMs or delivery leads
- Integrate REST APIs, payment gateways, CRMs, and third-party services into WordPress environments
- Troubleshoot and maintain existing integrations as part of ongoing site management
- Support WooCommerce-based client sites including product configuration, checkout customization, and order management troubleshooting
- Manage plugin compatibility and flag issues proactively
- Maintain clear documentation for all maintenance activities, custom code, and site-specific configurations
- Track tasks and progress in the team’s project management tool (Orbit)
- Utilize AI-assisted tools such as ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, or similar platforms to accelerate development, improve debugging efficiency, and support documentation
- Explore productivity tools to enhance coding efficiency and workflow management
- You treat maintenance as real engineering work, not lesser work
- You can diagnose a backend issue quickly and explain the fix clearly
- You’re comfortable owning multiple client sites at once without losing track of any of them
- You document as you go, so nothing depends on memory
- You move fluidly between routine upkeep and custom development when a site needs it
- 5 years of hands-on experience in WordPress backend development
- Strong command of PHP and WordPress core — hooks, filters, actions, and custom post types
- Proven experience in custom theme and plugin development
- Experience managing live WordPress sites including updates, security, and performance monitoring
- Solid understanding of MySQL and database management
- Knowledge of REST API integration within WordPress environments
- Proficiency with Git version control and structured deployment workflows
- Experience with HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript/jQuery for frontend implementation support
- Familiarity with WooCommerce and page builders such as Elementor
- Knowledge of hosting environments, staging setups, and server configurations
- Strong attention to detail and ability to manage multiple sites and tasks simultaneously
- WordPress, WooCommerce, Elementor
- Git, staging/production environments
- Orbit (task tracking)
- AI-assisted tools (ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, or similar)
- Experience managing a portfolio of maintenance retainer sites in an agency environment
- Familiarity with WordPress multisite configuration and management
- Exposure to caching tools such as WP Rocket, or similar
- Understanding of SEO fundamentals and technical SEO best practices
- Comfort working across multiple concurrent client projects with shifting priorities
- Ownership of a live portfolio of client sites, with real accountability for their health
- A mix of steady maintenance work and hands-on custom development
- Exposure to a wide range of WordPress and WooCommerce environments
- A structured, process-driven role with room to grow into broader development responsibility
