Overview

The VIP team provides consulting, support, hosting, training, and other services to some of the biggest and best WordPress sites on the web such as Time Inc., Facebook, Microsoft, News Corp, FiveThirtyEight, The New York Times, and hundreds more.

As some of the biggest brands on the web, our clients are often pushing the limits of WordPress. The VIP team works to help our clients get the most out of WordPress, doing everything from providing guidance, to reviewing their code to ensure security and performance, to developing new tools to help improve our platform.

The VIP team have a yearly whole team meetup and sub team meetups during the year.

About you

We’re looking to hire a Expert Debugger which is an important role in terms of how we deliver services for our clients and it’s also a potential pathway to other roles.

Requirements

  • You are deeply knowledgeable in WordPress and have proficient coding skills
  • You have a strong understanding of the Web including HTTP, PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and REST APIs
  • You have solid communication skills and are comfortable working primarily in a customer-facing role, including providing support and guidance to other developers
  • You’re a motivated and patient troubleshooter able to take big problems and break them down into manageable pieces with elegant solutions
  • Self-driven work ethic. You need to be a self-starter who loves taking initiative and seeing things through to completion
  • Curiosity and the desire to learn. Our business is changing and growing fast, who knows what will be the skills of tomorrow? Flexibility is key
  • You enjoy collaborating with other developers, making recommendations on technique or approach

Nice to have

  • Good understanding of internet networking
  • Understanding of issues around scalability and performance
  • Knowledge of modern Javascript development e.g. React
  • Experience with monitoring tools such as Kibana and New Relic

What you can expect from us

Our team will train you up on the VIP platform, the inner workings of our services and help you increase your WordPress expertise even further.

Over time we’ll put you in a position to apply your skills to engineering opportunities of even greater scale and complexity. You can also expect to work with clients operating some of the biggest WordPress sites on the internet.

As an Expert Debugger you’ll work alongside the other support team members and account managers of our client services team. A typical day could include:

  • Debugging client code
  • Advising on best practices
  • Monitoring performance
  • Recommending proactive fixes
  • Collaborating on plugin development
  • Urgent issue response

In addition to client-facing work, you can expect to spend time on internal projects as well such as:

  • improving internal tooling
  • collaborating with agency partners on shared projects
  • taking part in regular team learnups
  • growing and improving your development skills.

We’re serious about increasing diversity in the tech industry. We encourage applications from women, people of color, people with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ community, and other communities traditionally underrepresented in this field. Read more about our commitment to diversity and inclusion here.

Benefits

  • Open vacation policy (no set number of days per year). We encourage all employees to take the time they need for vacation, to pursue their own interests, to stay healthy, and to spend time with friends and family.
  • Home office setup and coworking allowances. Working from a coffee shop? You can use your coworking allowance for the requisite latte!
  • We happily provide or reimburse hardware and software you’ll need, as well as books or conferences that promote continued learning.
  • Company-sponsored life insurance.
  • Open parental leave (includes maternity, paternity, and adoption). If you’ve been with Automattic for 12 months, your leave is fully paid.
  • WordPress-branded laptop at your four-year anniversary. A spiffy set of wireless headphones at your seven-year anniversary.
  • Paid two to three-month sabbatical encouraged every five years.
  • We cover all costs of company travel, so dust off that passport! Your team will get together one to three times per year in locations around the globe.
  • Other benefits are country-specific, and include health, vision, and dental insurance; matching retirement/pension contributions; childcare vouchers; income protection; travel insurance; and discount offers.

How to apply

Let us know what you can contribute to the team. Include the title of the position you’re applying for and your name in the subject. Proofread! Make sure you spell and capitalize WordPress and Automattic correctly. We are lucky to receive hundreds of applications for every position, so try to make your application stand out. If you apply for multiple positions or send multiple emails there will be one reply.

Please answer the following questions in your cover letter. Applications without these questions answered will not be considered:

  1. Tell us some details about an interesting programming problem you’ve worked on. What made it interesting?
  2. How do you use our products or their competitors’? How would you improve one of them?
  3. What questions do you have for us?