Senior WordPress Backend Engineer (PHP)

Role Overview

Own the backend platform that powers Patrika's newsroom. This is a backend PHP role focused on WordPress internals — content models, taxonomies, REST APIs, custom plugins, caching, and the infrastructure that serves millions of articles across web and mobile.

You'll design how content is structured, exposed through APIs, and scaled for high-traffic publishing.

What You'll Own

• Own the WordPress backend platform end to end.
• Design and maintain custom taxonomies, custom post types, metadata and content relationships across sections, cities, editions, authors and story formats.
• Build custom WordPress plugins and backend editorial workflows in PHP.
• Design, build and maintain WordPress REST APIs that power mobile apps and decoupled front ends.
• Optimize backend performance through caching, query optimization, object caching, CDN invalidation and database tuning.
• Plan and execute WordPress upgrades, plugin updates and backend migrations without breaking URLs or editorial workflows.
• Build secure, maintainable PHP services using modern PHP 8.x, Composer, PSR standards and version control.

Who We're Looking For

Must Have

• 5–8 years of backend PHP development, with most experience in production WordPress.
• Strong understanding of WordPress internals — hooks, filters, WP_Query, metadata, taxonomy APIs and plugin architecture.
• Hands-on experience designing complex taxonomies and content models for large publishing or content-heavy websites.
• Strong experience building and extending WordPress REST APIs and integrating them with frontend or mobile applications.
• Experience building custom plugins from scratch in PHP.

Scale Experience

• Has worked on high-traffic WordPress websites.
• Can explain caching architecture, query optimization and performance improvements with measurable impact.

Backend Engineering

• Modern PHP 8.x, Composer and PSR standards.
• MySQL query optimization and indexing.
• Git-based development and CI/CD deployments.

Who Isn't a Fit

• Primarily a WordPress theme or page-builder developer.
• Has only configured existing plugins instead of building backend functionality.
• Limited experience with taxonomies, REST APIs or WordPress backend architecture.
• No experience running WordPress at production scale.
• Notice period longer than 15 days.

How You'll Work

• Remote (India), full-time contract.
• Immediate joiners preferred (0–15 days).
• Work closely with editorial, mobile and frontend engineering teams to power Patrika's publishing platform.