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Senior WordPress Developer

INN Labs (Institute for Nonprofit News)

Remote | Posted: 5 years ago

This job is expired and may no longer be accepting applications.

Headquarters: Los Angeles, Denver, Remote

Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), a network of nearly 200 nonprofit news organizations, has an immediate opening for a Senior Developer on our product and technology team (INN Labs). The position may be remote or can be located with our LA or Denver teams.

The ideal candidate for this position is an experienced full-stack developer with WordPress expertise, who is interested in the reinvention of news media, trust in media, and a free press.  The Senior Developer will be adept at understanding client needs, planning development projects based on business goals, and writing code that solves challenges or advances innovative solutions in media.

About INN and INN Labs:
INN Labs serves the fast-growing field of independent investigative and public service news. Across the U.S., news entrepreneurs and communities are founding and growing digital native news sites. These are fast-moving, innovative, and award-winning newsrooms. INN Labs directly supports more than 50 of these news organizations and advances the sector through our technical services.

The team focuses on problems that INN Labs is uniquely suited to tackle at a network level, such as:
  • Providing custom design and development, digital product planning, documentation, and training to independent news media clients and members.
  • Building open source tools to solve their needs for growth and support reporting, revenue generation, and public engagement.
  • Working with innovative partners such as NPR Digital, Knight News Lab, and the Trust Project to make easily adopted publisher tools on a network scale.
  • Advancing and supporting 50+ news websites using Largo, the WordPress theme for publishers which we design, build, and maintain.

Our work is divided between our own INN Labs projects and one-on-one contracting, advising, and support for individual news sites, most of them nonprofits. You can read more about us on our website and our team docs and can check out our projects on GitHub.

INN Labs is growing and the tools and processes we use are ours to build. Successful candidates must be excited by innovation and agility.

As part of a remote team, successful candidates must be good at managing their own schedules, making sure they have a clear understanding of project expectations and benchmarks, initiating communication around any changes that arise during projects and owning delivery of assigned deliverables.

You’ll be joining an accomplished team in a key role as senior developer, but our team is highly collaborative so you’ll have an opportunity to work on a diverse range of complex projects while continuing to learn and develop new skills.

This is a full-time position with benefits. Our compensation package is competitive and commensurate with experience. We are also committed to giving our employees the tools they need to do their job and supporting their professional growth so you’ll get a generous allowance for hardware, software, travel to conferences, etc.

Your specific responsibilities will include:
  • Serving as a lead solutions architect of INN Labs’ publishing tools, WordPress framework, and large-scale projects to ensure they reflect and meet industry and client goals.
  • Managing the technical infrastructure for INN’s technology projects.
  • Having a strong voice and say in INN’s overall technology strategy.
  • Understanding client/member journalism and business goals and framing technology tools and product solutions and projects that meet them.
  • Delivering performant and well-documented code on time and on budget.
  • Guiding newsrooms and media business staff to find and implement the tools and strategies that best advance their goals, including those created by INN Labs and developers at INN member organizations.
  • Supporting other team members with code reviews, knowledge shares, and direct mentorship.
  • Supporting independent news media by serving as a thought leader on emerging technologies and best practices for news technology. This may include occasional posting in the INN Labs blog, presenting at news/tech conferences, and contributing to newsletters.

Desired skills and attributes for the position: 
We understand you might not have all of these covered but if this roughly sounds like a good fit for your skills and interests we would love to hear from you!

  • Several years of professional experience in web development, ideally in an agency or news industry setting. Experience with nonprofit business models is also helpful.
  • Strong communication skills. Ability to draw out business and editorial goals and deliver the best solutions to reach them.
  • Proven commitment to writing clean, well-documented code.
  • Strong front-end development skills (HTML/CSS/JS).
  • Knowledge of and experience with the full LAMP stack with a particular focus on PHP and MySQL.
  • Experience developing for WordPress including themes, plugins (WooCommerce, for example) and WordPress multisite.
  • Knowledge of how to interact with APIs, especially the WordPress REST API.
  • Experience with git and deployment tools.
  • Commitment to openness and sharing/writing/talking about your work.
  • Curiosity and the willingness to learn, adapt and teach.

Nice to have:
  • Experience writing end-user documentation and explaining complex technical concepts to non-technical users.
  • Agile web development experience.
  • Experience with or interest in learning React.
  • Stakeholder-facing project management and/or product management experience.
  • WordPress core contributor and/or active involvement in the WordPress developer community.

We are a distributed team and this can be a remote position, or based in our LA or Denver operations. Previous experience working remotely would be helpful, but we’ll help and support your transition if this is your first remote job. We are committed to giving our employees the tools they need to do their job and supporting their professional growth.

INN is an equal opportunity employer and we are committed to creating a workplace where diversity is valued. In addition to federal law requirements, INN complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities.

To apply: To apply, please send the following to [email protected]: A brief resume/portfolio, 3 projects you’re especially proud of (links to projects, your GitHub repo, etc.), and a cover letter (in an email, no attachments please) answering the following: 1. Why is this job the perfect fit for you? 2. How has your previous experience prepared you for this position? 3. Why are you excited to join INN, and our team, in particular?

This job was sourced from WeWorkRemotely.