Freelance Senior Web Engineer

Freelancing at Human Made

Join Human Made as a freelancer and you’ll feel like part of the team. You’ll be working on interesting and complex projects, alongside some of the industry's top talent. We’re fully remote, and have been for over 10 years, so you can expect well established ways of working, and a vibrant online culture. It’s no wonder that freelancers often choose to join our team on a more permanent basis.

Once you are qualified, you'll be added to our freelance talent pool, and be invited to projects that suit your availability and expertise as soon as they become available, which might not be immediately. Nevertheless, you will integrate as part of the team, so you are expected to join team meetings and activities (although we have a strong emphasis on asynchronous communication) once you start participating in projects.

About Us

Human Made is a globally distributed company that helps organisations drive customer engagement, reinforce brand value and improve operations with digital solutions powered by Altis, our WordPress digital experience platform.

Over the past 10+ years, we’ve helped brands such as TechCrunch, CapGemini and USA Today build and deliver their digital strategies, transforming the way people interact with some of the most visited websites in the world. We have deep expertise and investment in using WordPress as a tool to create large-scale platforms, websites, and applications that drive transformational business value.

Senior Web Engineer Responsibilities

• Take ownership at a project level for not only your own work, but work that interacts or impacts your own
• Assist other developers on your projects
• Architect projects and complex subsystems
• Assess the pros and cons of different approaches to software architecture, even when there is limited information
• Carry out bug fixes and debugging not only in your own work, but others on your projects; no bug should be too obscure!
• Take an active role in improving tooling, code, and communication whether directly on a current project or assisting others on their projects
• Remain informed on development best practices within the industry
• Proactively address technical issues as they arise
• Consistently be pushing for performance and security considerations and improvements
• Provide useful architectural input and feedback for whole systems, drawing on knowledge of CS fundamentals, other programming paradigms or frameworks
• Write technical documentation for project architecture and decisions

Requirements

As an external contractor/freelancer, we expect you to be able to join teams and onboard efficiently. You should feel comfortable with a lot of autonomy, and delivering to tight deadlines. Excellent communication gained through remote work experiences, and a history of Agile project delivery, are essential.

As a Sr Web Engineer, you should have a comprehensive understanding of modern web development, with an emphasis on PHP and JavaScript in a WordPress context. In order to join project teams, you should be knowledgeable in WordPress components and technologies. This includes WordPress internals, including the bootstrap process, global state, and the majority of WordPress components. To enable you to architect complex WordPress projects, you should also have knowledge of the larger WordPress ecosystem, including commonly used third-party libraries.

While you will apply your skills on the project you are assigned to, we also expect you to engage and interact with the wider-company engineering team on supplementary activities. This could be code review, helping others debug problems, or offering advice and architectural guidance.

You should have:

• In-depth understanding of engineering with JavaScript and/or PHP
• Expert WordPress knowledge
• Ability to debug your own code and that of others
• Experience in using debugging tools
• Expert HTML5 & CSS
• Experience in versioning technologies such as Git
• Solid understanding of MySQL and the considerations of database-driven applications
• Extensive experience using RESTful APIs
• Ability to set up local development environments
• Proficiency in written and oral communication in English, and ability to utilise and parse through technical terminology comfortably
• Ability to manage your workload and juggle multiple tasks
• In-depth understanding of performance considerations
• In-depth understanding of security considerations
• Ability to architect complex subsystems
• Comprehensive understanding of WordPress
• Proven experience working on large enterprise WordPress development projects

• An Interest in AI-assisted development tools and an understanding of their appropriate use and limitations

As we are looking for long term relationships with excellent, reliable freelancers, we process applications much like hiring for permanent positions. Once you have successfully joined our freelancer network, we will send appropriate work opportunities to you.

The application process:

• Apply using the form on this advert
• Soon after we received your application, you will be sent a questionnaire to gather more specific information
• You will then be invited to interview with one of our in-house engineers
• We will review work examples
• Successful people will be added to our systems, and appropriate work opportunities will be shared

Benefits

Whether you are a freelancer, or a permanent member of the team, we want all Humans to have a fantastic experience, and benefit from Human Made’s people focused approach to work.

• Gain experience working in an agency, without a long term commitment
• Work alongside some of the WordPress industry’s top engineers
• Access to watercooler channels which will open up plenty of opportunities to network with other WordPress peers at Human Made
• The opportunity to explore Human Made with the potential of becoming a full-time employee