Web Developer
About The Position
The American Immigration Council is seeking a Web Developer to be the in-house technical owner of their WordPress properties. This role involves developing new page templates and blocks, extending and troubleshooting custom themes and plugins, maintaining site health, and collaborating with an external development agency on larger projects. The developer will work closely with internal teams (Marketing & Communications, Research, Legal, Programs) and external partners (development agency, payment systems consultant). The ideal candidate is comfortable owning a codebase, communicating with non-technical stakeholders, and learning quickly in a small team environment. This position is suitable for a developer with approximately 4-6 years of experience looking for ownership and growth opportunities.
Requirements
- 4-6 years of professional experience building and maintaining WordPress sites
- Strong PHP skills and demonstrated experience with custom theme development (not just page builders or off-the-shelf themes)
- Proficiency in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript; comfort with modern CSS layout and vanilla JS
- Experience with Git-based workflows and deploying to staging and production environments
- Working knowledge of the WordPress plugin ecosystem, including how to evaluate and safely update third-party plugins
- Experience with Advanced Custom Fields or comparable content modeling tools
- Ability to explain technical tradeoffs to non-technical colleagues and to scope work realistically
- Comfort working independently and prioritizing across competing requests
Nice To Haves
- Familiarity with managed WordPress hosting (Pantheon, WP Engine) and CI/CD via GitHub Actions
- Experience with local development environments (DDEV, Local, Docker)
- Experience with a templating layer such as Timber/Twig
- Experience with Gutenberg block development, including custom blocks and block patterns
- Nonprofit, advocacy, or mission-driven organization experience
Responsibilities
- Build and maintain custom WordPress themes, page templates, and reusable components.
- Develop Gutenberg blocks and Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) configurations.
- Write clean, accessible, responsive HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that meets WCAG 2.1 AA standards.
- Translate designs and content requirements into working pages, and troubleshoot layout and rendering issues.
- Extend WordPress through custom plugins and functionality: custom post types, taxonomies, admin interfaces, REST endpoints, and third-party API integrations.
- Maintain and debug existing custom code.
- Write and optimize PHP with attention to security, performance, and maintainability.
- Own the WordPress core, theme, and plugin update cycle for multiple WordPress sites: test in staging, resolve conflicts, and deploy safely.
- Monitor site performance, uptime, and errors; diagnose and resolve issues as they arise.
- Apply security best practices and respond to vulnerability disclosures promptly.
- Manage local, staging, and production environments and use version control and CI/CD workflows for all deployments.
- Serve as the day-to-day technical point of contact for the external development and hosting partner, and coordinate with the payment systems consultant on anything that touches the J-1 sponsorship workflow.
- Support colleagues with page builds, campaign launches, forms, and troubleshooting requests.
- Implement and QA analytics and tag management changes in partnership with the team.
- Write and maintain documentation for the codebase, environments, and recurring processes.
- Provide light technical guidance to web editors on publishing workflows and site conventions.
Benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance
- Employer-paid life insurance and disability benefits
- 401(k) retirement savings plan with matching contributions after 3 months of employment
- Generous paid time off
- Paid parental leave
- Employee assistance program
- Professional development opportunities
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Mid Level
Education Level
No Education Listed
