Senior WordPress Platform Engineer

Job Title:Senior WordPress Platform Engineer
Location: Santa Clara, CA

Senior WordPress Platform Engineer (12+ Years)

Please look for profile as per below client notes. This requirement is critical.

Must Have Skills
Skill 1 – 12+ years of experience in web/platform engineering, with strong focus on WordPress
Skill 2 – Proven expertise in WordPress multisite architecture and operations
Skill 3 – Strong knowledge of PHP, MySQL, REST APIs, and modern web technologies

Good To have Skills
Skill 1 – Experience working with Copilot, Claude

WordPress Platform Partner
This is not a developer-for-hire engagement. We are seeking a WordPress Platform Partner — a senior, independent technical steward who takes genuine ownership of a complex, live platform and operates without handholding. The distinction is important

The strategic, creative, and architectural owner of this platform is the Global Marketing Lead. The Platform Partner executes her vision with technical excellence — without needing to own it.


Platform Partner (what we need)
• Proactively manages the platform environment
• Communicates without being chased
• Flags risks before they become problems
• Operates independently in ambiguous situations
• Manages the relationship

3. Operating Environment
Candidates must be genuinely comfortable with the following conditions. These are not aspirational they describe day-to-day reality:

• Lean, fast-moving environment inside a large enterprise — minimal process infrastructure, high accountability
• Work often begins with rough mockups, general direction, or verbal briefs — not fully specced requirements
• Enterprise security and compliance requests (vulnerability scans, GIS audits, patching mandates) arrive without warning and require calm, independent resolution
• Stakeholders span US, Japan, and China — cross-cultural communication awareness required
• Platform carries significant brand and business weight — production errors have real consequences
• No internal Applied Materials IT support team dedicated to this platform; the Partner owns it

Core Technical Requirements
All requirements are non-negotiable. Candidates should already own these competencies.

Platform Architecture
• WordPress Multisite architecture and operations at enterprise scale
• Multilingual site management (WPML or equivalent) across multiple regional instances
• Custom theme and plugin development — not theme-level configuration
• Template architecture, URL structure governance, and taxonomy management

Security & Compliance
• Enterprise security and vulnerability management — owns remediation, does not escalate anxiety
• Experience handling third-party security audits, penetration testing coordination, and compliance documentation
• Plugin lifecycle governance: evaluation, approval, patching, and retirement frameworks

Operations & Delivery
• CI/CD pipeline management and deployment workflows
• Performance optimization — Core Web Vitals, caching, CDN, PageSpeed
• Cloud-hosted WordPress environments (WP Engine, Azure, AWS, or equivalent)
• Ability to execute from mockups and rough directions no Figma dependency required
• Experience with AI-assisted development tools (Claude, GitHub Copilot, or equivalent) active use, not familiarity

Communication & Partnership
• Proactive, structured communication — owns the working relationship, does not wait to be managed
• Able to translate technical issues into plain language for non-technical marketing stakeholders
• Responsive during core PST business hours; clear about availability and capacity

Immediate Platform Priorities
The selected partner will be expected to assess and own the following on engagement start:

• URL structure cleanup and consistency across three regional sites
• Podcast and archive routing conflict resolution
• Category taxonomy gaps and standardization
• Template inconsistencies across regional instances
• Regional sync issues between English, Japanese, and Chinese sites
• Plugin lifecycle audit and governance framework establishment
• Security vulnerability backlog remediation