Drupal Frontend Engineer

AHU Technologies Inc•Washington, DC

8d•$54 - $59

About The Position

Client requires the services of a contractor Web Developer with strong Drupal expertise to support the development, maintenance, and modernization of District government websites, including DC.gov and associated agency digital properties. This role involves designing, developing, and maintaining Drupal-based websites, building and customizing modules and themes, performing updates and migrations, integrating with enterprise systems, and ensuring compliance with accessibility and security standards. The engineer will also collaborate with project managers, designers, and stakeholders, produce technical documentation, and provide production support, including occasional after-hours work.

Requirements

Strong command of semantic HTML5: sectioning elements, headings hierarchy, lists, tables, and forms.
Solid grasp of web accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA): ARIA roles and attributes, keyboard navigation, focus management, alt text, and accessible form labeling.
Familiarity with structured data and SEO markup: meta tags, Open Graph, Twitter cards, and Schema.org/JSON-LD.
Understanding of how Drupal renders markup through Twig, and the ability to produce clean, valid output via template overrides.
Deep working knowledge of modern CSS layout: Flexbox and CSS Grid, with sound judgment about when to use each.
Proficiency with responsive design: media queries, fluid typography, container queries, and mobile-first methodology.
Command of the cascade, specificity, and inheritance, with the ability to debug specificity conflicts rather than reaching for important.
Comfort with CSS custom properties (variables), modern color/spacing tokens, and maintainable theming patterns.
Awareness of cross-browser compatibility, vendor prefixing strategy, and progressive enhancement.
Solid command of modern JavaScript (ES6+): arrow functions, destructuring, modules, promises, and async/await.
Strong DOM manipulation and event-handling skills, including event delegation and performance-conscious listeners.
Fluency with the Fetch API and asynchronous data handling, including JSON parsing and error handling.
Working knowledge of Drupal's JavaScript layer: Drupal.behaviors, once(), drupalSettings, and the AJAX framework.
Understanding of how to attach and scope JS correctly through the Libraries API rather than inline scripts.
Familiarity with debugging via browser DevTools: breakpoints, the network panel, performance profiling, and the console.
Fluency with the Drupal 9/10/11 admin UI: content types, fields, vocabularies, view modes, form/display modes, blocks, menus, URL aliases, and redirects.
Solid command of Configuration Management workflows: config export/import, config_split for environment-specific config, config_ignore for protected config.
Strong grasp of user access control: roles, permissions, content moderation workflows, and custom workflow states/transitions.
Demonstrated expertise with Views: complex queries, contextual filters, relationships, exposed filters/sorts, output rewriting, and REST exports.
Experience administering the Media Library, image styles, responsive image styles, and crop/focal-point strategies.
A clear mental model of what belongs in config vs. content vs. state vs. settings.php.
Strong Twig skills: template suggestions, template preprocessing, and theme hook implementations.
Comfort with the Libraries API: defining JS/CSS, managing dependencies, and conditional loading.
Experience with modern base themes (Olivero/Stable9) and component-based theming.
Familiarity with Single Directory Components (SDC) for Drupal 10.3+.
Solid responsive design fundamentals, a disciplined CSS methodology (e.g., BEM), and SCSS/SASS proficiency.
Disciplined input sanitization and output escaping (XSS, HTML, URL filters; Twig autoescaping).
A reflexive habit of using placeholders to prevent SQL injection and applying access checks on entity queries.
Working knowledge of file-upload security, CSRF tokens, and trusted host patterns.
Experience conducting permission audits and reviewing for privilege escalation.
Understanding of Git workflows: feature branches, rebase vs. merge, conflict resolution, and hotfix patterns.
Strong Drush proficiency, including cache rebuilds, config import/export, user management.
Competence with Composer for project scaffolding, patching, and autoloader generation.
Experience with a local development environment, ideally Lando (DDEV/Docksal also welcome).
The ability to write technical documentation that a non-developer content editor can follow.
A methodical diagnostic approach — able to walk through debugging complex issues without guesswork.
Good code-review hygiene: readable commits, descriptive PRs, and openness to feedback.
Adherence to Drupal community coding standards (PHPCS with the Drupal and Drupal Practice rulesets).
16+ yrs. performing specialized (often advanced) programming and technical development for the Internet
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field (equivalent experience may be substituted).
At least three (3) years of hands-on Drupal development (Drupal 7 and 9, 10, or 11 required).
Demonstrated proficiency in PHP, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and Twig.
Experience with Composer, Drush, Git, and MySQL/MariaDB.
Working knowledge of Section 508 and WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards.

Nice To Haves

Strong SCSS/SASS skills: nesting, mixins, functions, partials, and a disciplined file architecture.
A consistent CSS methodology such as BEM, and an understanding of how it maps onto Drupal's class conventions.
Familiarity with CSS transitions, transforms, and animations, used with attention to performance and reduced-motion preferences.
Awareness of frontend performance: deferring/async loading, minimizing reflows, debouncing/throttling, and avoiding render-blocking scripts.
Experience with a build/tooling pipeline (Webpack, Vite, or Gulp) and with linting/formatting (ESLint, Prettier, Stylelint).
Exposure to a modern framework (React/Vue) is a plus, particularly for decoupled or partially decoupled Drupal frontends.
Hands-on experience with the Domain Access module: domain entities, domain access fields on content/users/blocks, and current-domain negotiation.
Practical command of the Domain Config module, including domain-specific config overrides and override precedence (settings.php > Domain Config UI > base config).
A clear understanding of how config overrides cascade, and why programmatic overrides in settings.php will silently take precedence over UI changes.
Familiarity with cache contexts and invalidation in a multi-domain context.
Experience with domain-aware menu, block, and pathauto strategies, and with cross-domain content sharing vs. domain-restricted content patterns.
Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines (BLT, GitHub Actions, or Acquia Pipelines).
Hands-on Acquia Cloud experience: environments, Cloud Hooks, code/database/files workflow, and Acquia CLI.
Comfort with multi-database configuration and routing.
Experience building and consuming REST APIs: JSON:API, the REST module, and custom REST resources.
Experience with common third-party integrations: analytics and marketing automation.
Acquia Certified Developer or Site Builder credential.
Experience with headless/decoupled Drupal (JSON:API, GraphQL).
Familiarity with Acquia Cloud, Pantheon, or AWS hosting environments.
Prior experience supporting District, state, or federal government web platforms.
Knowledge of DevSecOps, CI/CD pipelines, and Docker.

Responsibilities

Design, develop, and maintain Drupal-based websites supporting DC.gov and District agency platforms.
Build and customize Drupal modules, themes, content types, taxonomies, and views per agency requirements.
Perform Drupal core and contributed module updates, security patches, and version migrations (e.g., Drupal 7 to Drupal 10/11).
Integrate Drupal sites with enterprise systems, APIs, and third-party services.
Ensure deliverables comply with Section 508, WCAG 2.1 AA, and District web standards.
Apply web security best practices consistent with Client and federal cybersecurity guidelines.
Collaborate with Client project managers, UX designers, content strategists, and agency stakeholders.
Produce technical documentation, code comments, and operational runbooks.
Provide Tier 3 production support and participate in deployment activities, including occasional after-hours work.
Performs programming and technical work for website and Internet development.