WordPress Developer for Fast Growing Pet Company

Are you a talented web developer who loves WordPress? And do you get excited about building new features that will be used by millions of pet lovers every month? Then this could very well be the opportunity for you!

We’re Pangolia—one of the fastest-growing pet companies, and we’re on a mission to create the biggest, most helpful pet company in the world. Our biggest sites: PetKeen.com, Hepper.com, and ExcitedCats.com, are visited by millions of pet lovers every month, and we’re undergoing rapid growth.

Our sites are all built on WordPress, and our own cat furniture e-commerce brand: Hepper is running on WooCommerce. In this position you will be working alongside our Lead Developer on building new features and tools that help pet lovers all over the world.

We’re a 100% remote company so you’d have the freedom to work from anywhere. It's a full-time position (40 hours a week), yet you get to plan your own schedule and work whenever you want. You will become an integral member of our team at Pangolia consisting of a diverse group of 95 talented individuals from all over the world, joining us on our united goal of improving the lives of pets and those who care for them.

This is a great opportunity if you’re an amazing developer looking to rapidly grow your skills whilst working alongside peers who are at the top of their field.

You will be responsible for  

●    Developing new tools and software that help millions of pet lovers every month (could for example be to develop a Puppy Weight Chart Tool / Calculator that helps pet owners predict how fast, and how big their dog will grow)

●       Developing, testing, and maintaining new features and solutions for our WordPress sites for desktop and mobile browsers that are optimized for high traffic

●       Optimize our websites for mobile users

●       Create, review, and update technical documentation

●       Contributing to our development processes, QA procedures, and technical planning

●       Communicating and supporting our content and marketing departments with dev/IT requests, troubleshooting, fixing bugs

●       Performing scheduled and non-scheduled maintenance and security updates on our WordPress sites

●       Securing and protecting our WordPress sites from hackers and malware, as well as eliminating risks

●       Ensuring that our servers and content delivery network (CDN) are stable enough to handle millions of users

●       Improve our team’s IT infrastructure

●       Keep apprised of relevant new technology and best practices

You are expected to have:

●       Experience with HTML, CSS, JavaScript/jQuery

●       Experience with PHP (7.4/8) and object-oriented programming (OOP)

●       Experience with MySQL and managing databases

●       Experience with WordPress development (eg themes, hooks, filters, plugin API, etc)

●       Experience with build tools like Webpack or ViteJS

●       Experience with Composer and basic understanding of autoloading, dependency management, and dependency injection

●       Experience with SSH and comfortable with basic terminal usage

●       Experience with Git (and GitHub)

●       Experience with TailwindCSS & PostCSS

●       Troubleshooting abilities (ie include finding CSS and JavaScript conflicts using browser developer tools, navigating codebases in theme and plugins, and determining whether a plugin or theme code could be causing a code conflict)

●       The ability to take a project on your own and get it done before the deadline

●       The ability to communicate well as we work remote (most of our communication is written in Slack with occasional calls)

It would be nice if you have:

●       Experience creating custom Elementor widgets

●       Experience with Docker and DDev.com for local development

●       Experience with WP CLI, WP REST API, and WP cron jobs

●       Experience with CDNs/Cloudflare

●       Experience with unit testing

●       Good understanding of website architecture, aesthetics and UI/UX best practices

●       Understanding of basic principles behind technical SEO and performance optimization

●       We would appreciate it if you could work with PHPStorm so that we can use their collaborative features and have some consistency in our development processes. However, if you prefer and work better with another IDE or coding tool, that's fine! Either way, we will pay for your license.

Type of person we would love for this role

●       You’re a dependable, friendly communicator

●       You’re passionate about solving problems with smart and elegant programming solutions. Your code is clean, understandable, and well commented

●       You’re a self-starter who loves taking initiative and seeing things through to completion.

●       You have the curiosity and desire to learn and grow your skills and discover new modern practices and follow the latest trends in WordPress

●       You take pride in the quality and craftsmanship of your work rather than just doing it to get it done but you are also able to balance it with not overdoing your work and being able to move and work fast

●       You’re able to juggle around and work on different projects and side tasks on a weekly basis. While we wish we could focus on one thing for weeks at a time to make it perfect, that’s often not the reality in a competitive market.

Benefits/Perks

●       Work from anywhere (we’re 100% remote)

●       Flexible work hours, you get to plan your own schedule and work whenever you want

●       Developer Growth.

○       You work with modern practices and you gain valuable experience with high-traffic sites

○       We value self-improvement. We cover expenses for books and work-related courses

○       We're open to changes, you have a voice in how things get done

●       Your monthly pay is paid biweekly (You’re paid every two weeks)

●       We'll pay for all your software needs that relate to your work (IDE/Coding tools, SnagIt, VPN, etc.). Usually, we provide license (serial) keys.

●       We cover 100% of your home internet bill.

●       We encourage you to find a working environment that suits your needs the best if working from home every single day isn’t for you.

○       We’ll cover monthly membership and/or day passes for co-working spaces

○       We’ll cover all your coffee purchases for the day in coffee shops

●       We give you a day off for your birthday! You get to stay in bed or hang with loved ones.

●       Paid company retreats

●       21 days of paid time off every year

●       Your work with a great, talented team that produces a high-growth work environment (we move fast)

●       Opportunity to move up in the company, and earn higher pay and bonuses

A typical workweek (example)  

●       Every Monday, we have a one-on-one Zoom meeting to discuss our goals, whether you are meeting your goals, what went well, what did not go well, and so on.

●       You have one or multiple projects to complete. You can work on them whenever and however you want without being micromanaged. However, you must be able to meet the deadline and be accountable for the quality of the end solution.

○       You’re also responsible for maintaining the Github repository of the project you’re working on, committing/pushing/documenting your changes, commenting on your code, and writing SOPs or technical documentation (if necessary). It doesn’t have to be pages long and can be very short and concise. But, as a developer, it makes life so much easier if you can return to your code in the future without having to think too hard about what you did. This is also about being considerate of your teammates' time.

●       There must be some overlap in our working hours so you can respond to urgent requests (if any) or chat with your manager or any of our departments on demand if they have an IT question. This means that some extra tasks may arise during the week.

○       You might have a day where one of our team members needs something urgent and needs it done the same or the next day, which can be valuable to the company, or a major issue needs to be fixed ASAP, in which case you might have to drop what you're working on and work on that or troubleshoot the entire day. If your main project's deadline cannot be met because of this (which is understandable), you should be able to communicate this on time.

○       However, most of the time you are able to work on your main projects in solitary. We understand that developers need complete focus. You can also chat and ask questions in our Slack channels.

●       You might get stuck in programming and need help, or some development processes may need to be explained. If it cannot be explained/resolved via chat or video, screen-sharing calls can be scheduled throughout the week.

The team (and our work culture)  

You’ll get to be part of a 100% remote company consisting of a diverse group of 95 talented individuals from all over the world. The people you will find on the team are veterinarians, marketers, content writers, editors, social media managers, graphics designers, content managers, and a lot more.

And you’ll get to join us on our united mission of improving the lives of pets and those who care for them. We dream big, and our vision is to become the biggest, most helpful pet company in the world.

You’ll get to be part of a company that’s undergoing hyper-growth, and the fast-paced work environment that comes with it.

And we’ve managed to grow at a healthy pace without ever sacrificing our culture and values.

Our company culture is focused on work and collaboration, but also while being open to the casual humor and chatter that makes us get to know each other.

We work hard, and you may have to work on the weekend every now and then if you have a lot on your plate. However, we have a huge understanding of the importance of time off, and we encourage each other to take time off.

A lot of us love traveling, and therefore, we plan on doing yearly company retreats, where we all meet up together and have fun.

We value the freedom of being able to work from anywhere, trust, and collaboration.

How to Apply for this Position  

1. You apply by completing this form, which will ask you a series of questions: https://forms.gle/RP8KpPVABuVZXqQP7

2. If we think you’d be a good fit for this role then we'd like to provide you an assignment that mimics an internal project as the following phase. You'll have the chance to demonstrate your abilities and have a better understanding of what to anticipate. This is a paid assignment for which you will be compensated hourly based on your expected salary for the position.

3. If there is a match, you will be invited to an interview where we will discuss the job, the company, and you’ll have the chance to ask any questions you may have.

4. If this goes well, we'll hire you! We begin with a trial period to allow you and the rest of the team to fully evaluate how we collaborate, followed by a final review and confirmation.