Senior Full-Stack Web Developer, Craft CMS

SECOND; Richmond, Northern (VA, KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equipment provided

Remote-friendly

Flexible schedule

Job summary

SECOND + WEST is a digital-first agency that ships real work for nonprofits, museums, and mission-driven brands. We seek a senior full-stack developer with deep Craft CMS expertise to become our primary developer, turning designs into launched sites and setting the technical standard.

You'll collaborate directly with clients, designers, and vendors, maintain live codebases, and build integrations like custom APIs and e-commerce flows.

Qualifications

• Extensive Craft CMS knowledge with complex site builds.
• Clean, accessible code and WCAG-aligned delivery.
• Excellent client and design-team communication.
• Detail-oriented with thorough documentation practices.
• Familiarity with design tools like Figma or Penpot.

Responsibilities

• Turn designs into launched sites and set technical standards.
• Collaborate with clients, designers, and vendors throughout projects.
• Contribute to and maintain client and starter codebases.
• Build integrations: custom APIs, CRM connections, e‑commerce flows.
• Document processes and ensure maintainability for future work.

Skills

Craft CMS expertise

Full-stack development

Communication

Accessibility standards

Design tools familiarity

Tools

Figma

AWS

Docker/DDEV

Job description

Senior Full-Stack Web Developer, Craft CMS (Remote, Contract)

SECOND + WEST is a digital-first agency that ships real work for real clients: nonprofits, museums, mission-driven brands, and the design studios without in‑house dev teams.

We're looking for a senior full-stack developer with deep Craft CMS expertise to become our primary developer: the one who turns designs into launched sites, sets the technical standard, and works shoulder to shoulder with the technical director. If you're quietly tired of ticket queues, standups about standups, and code nobody can read in six months, this is the antidote. Full‑time hours and enough autonomy to actually do the job well.

• Take Craft CMS builds from architecture to launch. Thoughtful content architecture, atomic component‑based templating, QA that catches problems before clients do, and performance tuning that holds up under real traffic. The kind of build the next developer can pick up without cursing your name.
• Collaborate directly with clients, designers, and vendors. Working through project details, presenting your work, and keeping the right people in the loop is part of the gig here. You're in the conversation, not just the commit log.
• Contribute to and help manage existing codebases, ours and our clients'. Improving live client sites with new features and ongoing care, and maintaining the starter projects every new Craft build kicks off from.
• Build the integrations clients keep paying us to extend: custom APIs, CRM connections, and e‑commerce flows that hold up under real traffic.
• Turn documentation from an afterthought into a standard. Clear docs make every build easier to return to and extend far past launch.
• Partner with the technical director on scope, estimates, and risk, flagging problems before a project starts, and setting the technical standard for any overflow help we bring in for volume.

What We're Looking For

Must-haves

• Extensive Craft CMS knowledge. You've built and launched complex Craft sites, written your own plugins, and know how to extend it when a build needs it.
• Accessibility is a habit, not a checkbox. You write clean, performant, accessible code, build to WCAG standards, and catch issues before a client (or an audit) does.
• Excellent communication, spoken as much as written. You can talk to clients and designers directly, hold your own on a call, and explain technical tradeoffs to non‑technical people without making them feel small.
• Detail-oriented to a fault. You read the whole brief before diving in, follow specs as written, and catch the small things a quick skim would miss. You ask questions early and add clarifying notes where needed. Your PRs are well‑drafted and tell the full story with supporting screenshots, video or other assets.
• Comfortable in design tools like Figma or Penpot, so you can pull specs, spacing, and assets straight from the design file.

Nice-to-haves (bring some of these and we're thrilled; bring none and we'll still talk)

• Craft Commerce, Shopify, Laravel, Statamic, Sanity, ExpressionEngine, or WordPress experience.
• Custom API development and CRM integrations.
• Complex e‑commerce builds that go beyond a basic storefront.
• Next.js, React, or Vue skills.
• Comfort with deploy and infrastructure basics (AWS, Laravel Forge, Docker/DDEV).
• Fluency with AI‑assisted dev tools (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and friends), plus the judgment to know when they belong in client work and when they don't.
• Familiar with Figma's MCP for AI‑assisted design-to-code, having agents read layouts, spacing, colors, and components.

Our current stack, for reference: Craft CMS, Shopify, PHP, Laravel, Statamic, Sanity, Next.js, Tailwind, Alpine, Vite, DDEV, Laravel Forge, GitHub, AWS.

Why Join Us

• You're the developer, not a ticket‑taker. Real ownership, a direct line to the person making decisions, and no bureaucracy to wade through to ship good work.
• Twenty-plus years of history and clients worth caring about. Museums, nonprofits, purpose‑driven brands. We work with people who aren't out to hurt anyone, and we turn down the ones who are.
• Variety without chaos. Craft‑heavy, but with room to touch Shopify, Laravel, custom APIs, and the occasional interesting problem. Enough range to stay sharp, enough focus to go deep.
• A founder who values craft the way you do. Well‑crafted code, clear docs, and sane timelines aren't things you'll have to fight for here. They're the standard.
• Calm Fridays. We keep Fridays lighter and mostly meeting‑free, a quieter day to wrap up loose ends, experiment, dig into an internal project, or have time for ideation.

What Success Looks Like

• First 30 days: You're fluent in our workflow and you've shipped your first production work on a live project. You know where everything lives and who everything is for.
• By 60 days: You independently own at least one client build end to end, from architecture through launch, with only light review along the way.
• By 90 days: You're handling the majority of active delivery, documenting as you go, and you've become the primary builder the role was built around.

Compensation & Logistics

This is a contractor role (1099), not a W-2 position.Paid time off to rest and enjoy life is part of the arrangement.

• Engagement: Full‑time contract (roughly 35-40 hours/week). This is meant to be your primary role, not a side gig you squeeze in.
• Location: Fully remote, work from wherever you are, with substantial daily overlap with 9am-5pm US Eastern hours required.
• Compensation: Competitive and based on experience.
• Equipment: We can provide the equipment you need to get the job done.

AI at S+W

We use AI heavily, to move faster, not to replace people. It clears the busywork so we can spend our time on the parts of the job that need real judgment and that we actually enjoy.

For this role, that looks like AI helping with scaffolding and boilerplate, writing and refactoring tests, drafting documentation, spinning up migrations, generating placeholder content, and translating a Figma file into a first pass of tokens and front‑end code. The work that eats hours without needing extensive expertise. The architecture calls, the tradeoffs, the "why we built it this way,", and knowing when the AI is wrong, that's the important part.