What You Will Do
Your day-to-day will vary depending on the client's priorities, but you can expect to:
- Build, customize, and maintain Shopify themes using Liquid templating, with a solid understanding of Shopify's theme architecture and CLI tooling
- Develop and customize WordPress themes and plugins from scratch — not just modifying existing templates, but writing clean, maintainable PHP and JavaScript code
- Customize and extend WooCommerce functionality — product types, checkout flows, payment gateway integrations, order management hooks, and custom shipping logic
- Integrate third-party tools and platforms into the store ecosystem — payment providers, email marketing platforms like Klaviyo or Omnisend, analytics tools, CRM connections, and review platforms
- Optimize store performance with a focus on Core Web Vitals — improving Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift, and First Input Delay through code-level optimizations, not just plugin installations
- Work directly with non-technical stakeholders to understand business requirements and translate them into functional, well-documented technical solutions
- Ensure all implementations are compliant with GDPR and EU cookie consent requirements — this is non-negotiable for European clients
- Maintain and improve existing codebases — refactoring where needed, documenting changes, and ensuring future developers can understand and extend your work
Requirements
The following are non-negotiable for this role:
Technical
- 2 to 5 years of hands-on professional experience in Shopify and/or WordPress development — in real production environments, not personal projects or agency overflow work
- Shopify: solid command of Liquid templating, Shopify CLI, theme architecture, and the Shopify admin ecosystem; Shopify Plus experience is a strong advantage
- WordPress: ability to build custom themes and plugins from scratch, deep WooCommerce customization experience, and comfort working directly in PHP without relying on page builders
- Strong HTML, CSS, and JavaScript fundamentals — you write clean markup, understand the cascade, and can implement interactive UI behavior without reaching for a framework unnecessarily
- Practical experience integrating third-party tools — payment providers, email marketing platforms, analytics, and customer-facing apps — including handling webhooks, APIs, and data flow between systems
- Working knowledge of Core Web Vitals and page speed optimization at the code level — you know what causes a slow store and how to fix it
Communication
- English proficiency at B2 level or above — you communicate directly with client stakeholders in meetings, async messages, and written documentation
- Comfortable talking to non-technical people — you explain technical decisions clearly without jargon and manage expectations professionally