Lead WordPress Developer

Pangolia operates some of the biggest pet websites on the internet (Catster, Dogster, Hepper, PangoVet), pulling in over 36 million visitors a year. They are looking for a Lead WordPress Developer to take total ownership of their web infrastructure. The frontend already looks great; this role is heavily focused on Backend Development, performance optimization, security, and managing technical debt. You will not just be fixing bugs; within 3-4 months, you will be tasked with hiring and managing your own team of 1-2 junior developers.

Key Responsibilities

• Performance & E-Commerce: Make their high-traffic content sites the fastest in the industry and revamp the WooCommerce checkout/product experience for their physical brand, Hepper.
• Feature Engineering: Develop custom plugins and tools (e.g., a "Puppy Weight Chart Calculator") from scratch to drive user engagement.
• Team Leadership: Hire, manage, and conduct code reviews for 1-2 new developers joining your department shortly after you start.
• Security & Maintenance: Proactively secure the WordPress network against vulnerabilities, hackers, and malware while clearing out a significant backlog of IT tasks.

Requirements

• Core Stack: Deep expertise in PHP, MySQL, JavaScript/jQuery, HTML, and CSS.
• WordPress Mastery: Advanced experience with WP Core (themes, hooks, filters, plugin API) and WooCommerce.
• Modern Tooling: Strong grasp of build tools (Webpack or ViteJS), Composer (dependency injection/autoloading), Git/GitHub, and SSH/Terminal usage.
• Problem Solving: Ability to navigate massive codebases, use browser dev tools to find JS/CSS conflicts, and debug rogue plugins independently.

Benefits & Perks

• Total Flexibility: Work from anywhere, anytime (as long as there's some overlap for emergencies).
• Workspace Budget: The company pays for your monthly Co-Working space membership if you don't want to work from home.
• Time Off & Travel: 21 days of PTO and all-expenses-paid international company retreats (they just went to Phuket, Thailand!).