Playground Wrangler

WordPress Playground needs a developer to help us shape the future of WordPress. We’re looking for a senior person, interested equally in the technology, the people using the technology, and the big picture.

Some of your responsibilities will include: 

  • Build fundamental, low-level PHP tools intended for inclusion in WordPress Core (e.g. WP<->WP synchronization, streaming parsers, git clients).
  • Read specifications, RFCs, web standards proposals (e.g. WHATWG HTML spec, git protocol, JSPI proposal).
  • Publish rough, half-baked prototypes to inspire the community and draw out the early reactions (e.g. a WordPress IDE, recording WordPress (test runs) with Playwright, a Blueprints builder).
  • Coordinate with the community and other Automattic teams.

Responsibilities:

  • Develop code for WordPress Playground, both in TypeScript and PHP, submit well described Github issues and pull requests, and engage in discussion and code reviews.
  • Communicate in a friendly and professional way with community members and help them take submissions over the finish line.
  • Make use of existing documentation resources and examples, and improve them where you see fit or make improvements to the APIs to help the community to achieve tasks faster.


Requirements: 

We’d like you to have built something in one or two areas listed below which required a deep dive into those areas. Three is more than enough. 

  • Web Assembly,
  • Offline apps,
  • Live collaboration,
  • Mobile apps,
  • Stream-processing data,
  • Parsers,
  • Browser extensions,
  • Web browser internals (e.g. chromium codebase),
  • PHP internals (the C codebase),
  • Git internals (the .git store, the protocol),
  • Helping define new web standards (e.g. contributing to WASM standards discussions, participating in PHP mailing lists, proposing RFCs for WordPress – even if there’s no RFC process in place).

Salary range: $70,000-$170,000 USD - Please note that salary ranges are global, regardless of location, and we pay in local currency.

This isn’t your typical work-from-home job—we are a fully-remote company with an open vacation policy. Read more about our compensation philosophy. To see a full list of benefits by country, consult our Benefits Page. And check out these links to learn more about How We Hire and What We Expect from Ourselves.

About Automattic 

We are the people behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, Simplenote, Jetpack, Longreads, Day One, Pocket Casts, and more. We believe in making the web a better place.

We’re a distributed company with more than 1700 Automatticians in 92 countries speaking 110+ different languages. And, even more than growth and profitability (although we’re plenty profitable), above all, we’re driven by a mission:  We democratize publishing and commerce so anyone with a story can tell it, and anyone with a product can sell it, regardless of income, gender, politics, language, or country.

We believe in Open Source, and the vast majority of our work is available under the GPL.

Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion at Automattic 

We’re improving diversity in the tech industry. At Automattic, we want people to love their work and show respect and empathy to all. We welcome differences and strive to increase participation from traditionally underrepresented groups. Our DEI committee involves Automatticians across the company and drives grassroots change. For example, this group has helped facilitate private online spaces for affiliated Automatticians to gather and helps run a monthly DEI People Lab series for further learning. DEI is a priority at Automattic, though our dedication influences far more than just Automatticians: We make our products freely available and translate our products into and offer customer support in numerous languages. We require unconscious bias training for our hiring teams and ensure our products are accessible across different bandwidths and devices. 

Automattic is a Most Loved Company and Disability Confident Committed. (Here’s what that might mean for you.) Learn more about our dedication to diversity, equity, and inclusion and our Employee Resource Groups.

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