7 months ago
Remote, United StatesSenior
Base Salary
$80k - $120k/yr
Responsibilities
- Own substantial features and systems through design, implementation, testing, rollout, and post-release operation.
- Build and ship across the managed hosting platform and WordPress product surfaces.
- Diagnose and resolve performance issues across application code, database queries, cache layers, PHP-FPM worker pools, and visitor-facing responses.
- Write upgrade-safe PHP for large, uncontrolled WordPress installations with legacy data and third-party plugins.
- Consolidate and modernize systems while preserving compatibility for existing sites.
- Design within the architecture, challenge it when appropriate, and break ambiguous problems into shippable increments.
- Write and maintain automated tests and participate actively in code review.
- Improve tooling, scripts, deployment pipelines, and operational automation.
- Mentor one or two engineers and document decisions for a distributed team.
Requirements
- 5+ years of professional PHP experience building and maintaining production software, including PHP 8.x, object-oriented design, dependency injection, Composer, autoloading, PSR standards, and static analysis.
- 3+ years of deep WordPress experience with hooks and filters, the REST API, WP-CLI, plugin and theme architecture, and upgrade-safe development.
- Strong Linux knowledge covering process and service management, systemd, filesystems, permissions, networking, and diagnosing systems under load.
- Working Bash and shell-scripting experience for deployments, migrations, maintenance, and diagnostics.
- Hands-on experience with nginx or Apache, PHP-FPM tuning, MySQL or MariaDB query performance, and Redis or Memcached object caching.
- Experience with automated testing using PHPUnit, Codeception and wp-browser, or a defensible equivalent.
- Comfort with Git, code review, and CI/CD as daily practices.
- Strong written communication and the ability to work autonomously across time zones.
- A degree in Computer Science or a related field is welcome, with equivalent practical experience equally welcome.
- Preferred qualifications include React, Block Editor and block development, WooCommerce at scale, Magento or Adobe Commerce, Ansible or comparable configuration-management tools, New Relic or comparable observability tools, Terraform or similar infrastructure-as-code tools, containers, CI/CD pipeline ownership, WCAG 2.1 AA and WAI-ARIA, and contributions to WordPress or open source.
Benefits
- Permanently remote, full-time position with a globally distributed team.
- At least four hours of daily overlap with US Eastern time, approximately 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM ET, is required.
- Remote-first, async-by-default work style with written decisions and limited meetings.
- Small teams, substantial ownership, and a sustainable pace.
About Nexcess
Nexcess provides managed hosting and specialty cloud services for SMBs, agencies, developers, and ecommerce teams running WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento. Its subscription offerings include optimized cloud and dedicated environments with managed compliance and support for complex configurations. The privately held company is headquartered in Lansing, Michigan and serves customers worldwide.