Quick Summary
About the Role
1280 Labs is seeking an experienced WordPress.org Developer to support a full website redevelopment project for a Canadian government regulatory body. This is a hands-on development role for a professional with proven experience building, deploying, and maintaining self-hosted WordPress.org environments in production settings.
This position requires a deep understanding of WordPress at the code level, focusing on building, configuring, securing, and maintaining self-hosted WordPress.org environments on cloud infrastructure. This is not a WordPress.com or page-builder role.
The project is expected to commence on May 25, 2026, with candidate confirmation aimed for in advance. This project-based engagement is anticipated to last approximately 18 months through launch, with potential for ongoing support and enhancement work post-delivery.
What You Will Be Working On
- Building and configuring a self-hosted WordPress.org environment on Canadian cloud infrastructure (likely AWS or Azure).
- Developing a custom WordPress theme to meet precise design, usability, performance, and accessibility requirements.
- Building or extending custom WordPress plugin/integration logic to support secure interaction with external regulatory systems, including eFiling-related workflows.
- Configuring and hardening the WordPress environment to meet enterprise-grade security expectations, including secure hosting, access control, patching, monitoring, and WAF/CDN integration.
- Integrating and validating third-party tooling for search, forms, SEO, caching/performance, and editorial workflows.
- Ensuring front-end implementation supports WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility requirements.
- Supporting content migration, QA, UAT, and pre-launch readiness.
- Helping create an intuitive CMS experience for non-technical content and communications teams.
- Participating in client-facing reviews and explaining technical recommendations in clear, plain language.
What We Are Looking For
- A strong portfolio of self-hosted WordPress.org projects demonstrating custom theme development, plugin development, and/or complex integrations.
- Proven experience building and maintaining self-hosted WordPress.org installations in production environments.
- Strong proficiency in PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and WordPress architecture.
- Experience deploying WordPress on AWS and/or Azure.
- Experience with WordPress security hardening and production support.
- Experience integrating WordPress with third-party APIs, structured data feeds, or external systems.
- Working knowledge of WCAG 2.1 AA and how to implement accessibility requirements in practice.
- Experience optimizing WordPress for performance, responsiveness, and maintainability.
- Comfortable working in a collaborative delivery environment with regular stakeholder checkpoints.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical decisions to non-technical stakeholders.
Nice to Have
- Experience delivering government, public sector, regulatory, or highly governed web projects.
- Experience with advanced search tooling, enterprise forms, and editorial workflow plugins.
- Familiarity with AWS WAF / CloudFront, Azure Front Door, Wordfence, ElasticPress, or similar tooling.
- Experience supporting structured content migration and CMS handoff/training.
- Experience working with multisite or multi-environment WordPress deployments.
Pay: $50.00-$80.00 per hour
Expected hours: 40.0 per week
Work Location: Remote