As a Senior Web Engineer, you should have a comprehensive understanding of modern web development, with an emphasis on JavaScript and PHP in a WordPress context.
You should be able to architect projects and complex subsystems, and understand how your work affects projects more broadly. You are expected to understand how your work impacts the wider performance and security of projects. You should be able to assess the pros and cons of different approaches to software architecture, even when there is limited information.
A comprehensive understanding of the components and technologies related to WordPress is crucial to this role. While previous experience with WordPress is not essential, it is highly recommended, and you will be expected to rapidly gain this in order to work effectively on project teams. This includes WordPress internals, including the bootstrap process, global state, and the majority of WordPress components. To enable you to architect complex WordPress projects, you should also have knowledge of the larger WordPress ecosystem, including commonly used third-party libraries.
The responsibilities and expectations of a Senior Web Engineer are not necessarily tied to a specific project. While you will need to apply your skills on each project you are assigned to, you are also expected to set a similar example when interacting with the whole engineering team for meta-level tasks. This could be cross-project code review, helping other engineers debug problems, or offering advice and architectural guidance to other projects.
As a senior engineer you should lead by example when working on projects, meeting with clients, giving critical feedback via code review to peers and respecting other engineering decisions. Your broad experience in WordPress development may mean you have strong preferences for technical decisions. It’s both your responsibility to voice concerns about technical decisions being made, but also have the distance and maturity to accept decisions made by the team and/or project technical lead, and commit yourself to build solutions in the agreed upon way.
Skills
- All skills described under Web Engineer, plus:
- In-depth understanding of performance considerations
- In-depth understanding of security considerations
- Ability to architect complex subsystems
- Comprehensive understanding of WordPress (may be developed on the job)
Responsibilities
- All responsibilities described under Web Engineer, plus:
- Take ownership at a project level for not only your own work, but work that interacts or impacts your own
- Assisting other developers on your team when asked for assistance
- Carry out bug fixes and debugging not only in your own work, but others on your projects; no bug should be too obscure!
- Take an active role in improving tooling, code, and communication whether directly on a current project or assisting others on their projects.
- Remain informed on development best practices within the industry
- Proactively address technical issues as they arise
- Consistently be pushing for performance and security considerations and improvements
- Provide useful architectural input and feedback for whole systems, drawing on knowledge of CS fundamentals, other programming paradigms or frameworks
- Work with clients and their expectations, navigating the relationship and taking ownership of client satisfaction
- Write technical documentation for project architecture and decisions
Relationships
Reports to: Engineering Manager
Works with: PM Team, Engineers, Sales & Accounts Team