Staff WordPress Architect — Remote Leader

Nexcess; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 155,000; Full time

Job summary

Nexcess is hiring Staff WordPress Engineers to own architectural direction across platform areas and product portfolios used by millions of WordPress sites. You will be responsible for defining target architectures while guiding multiple teams and maintaining backward compatibility.

The role requires deep PHP, WordPress expertise, and strong Linux/system skills. You will write code, drive migrations, and create robust rollback plans while mentoring senior engineers and writing key technical

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering with deep PHP, including PHP 8.x, OOP, DI, Composer, PSR, and static analysis.
• Demonstrated technical leadership across multiple teams with proven direction setting.
• Deep WordPress expertise: hooks/filters, REST API, WP-CLI, plugin architecture, upgrade-safe code.
• Genuine comfort on Linux: systemd, filesystems, networking, load.
• Shell scripting for deployments, migrations, diagnostics; know when to automate.
• Familiarity with hosting stack: nginx/Apache, PHP-FPM, caching, DB performance.
• Led migrations with backward compatibility and rollback plans.
• Ability to reason about cost, reliability, and operational burden.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for a platform area and define the target architecture.
• Own outcomes across teams; scope is a domain, not a backlog.
• Lead consolidation and migration work with rollback story.
• Make trade-off calls: build vs buy, performance vs complexity.
• Drive automation of provisioning, configuration, and maintenance.
• Design systems and define interfaces for other teams to build against.
• Frame problems for parallel execution across teams.
• Act as escalation point when issues are hard or on fire.
• Partner with Engineering Managers and Product on roadmap feasibility.
• Mentor senior engineers to reduce dependencies over time.
• Write design docs, RFCs, and post-incident write-ups.

Skills

PHP 8.x

WordPress

Linux

Leadership

Shell scripting

Automated testing

Architectural thinking

Written communication

Degree welcome

Education

CS degree or related field welcome

Tools

PHP-FPM

NGINX/Apache

MySQL/MariaDB

Redis/Memcached

WP-CLI

Composer & PSR

Bash scripting

Unit testing (PHPUnit)

Job description

Nexcess is hiring Staff WordPress Engineers to own architectural direction across platform areas and product portfolios used by millions of WordPress sites. You will be responsible for defining target architectures while guiding multiple teams and maintaining backward compatibility.

The role requires deep PHP, WordPress expertise, and strong Linux/system skills. You will write code, drive migrations, and create robust rollback plans while mentoring senior engineers and writing key technical