Junior WordPress Developer for Growing Website Design/Marketing Agency
Headquarters: Ann Arbor, MI
URL: https://www.themodernfirm.com
Role Introduction:
The Modern Firm works exclusively with solo and small law firms across the United States to develop, manage, and promote their websites. We are looking for a Junior Level PHP/WordPress developer that is experienced with jQuery, MySQL/MariaDB, and would have entry level JavaScript experience. The candidate will need to able to help our clients and company with five primary things.
- Developing custom WordPress themes from scratch (we utilize a customized framework similar to Genesis) guided by approved design prototypes (PSDs) from our team.
- Troubleshoot theme and plugin issues with websites we maintain.
- Assist clients with theme or functionality changes. (i.e. advising on and configuring a plugin, adding a custom post type, updating the style of a theme)
- Assist our helpdesk staff with more complex issues or provide additional client support during busy times.
- Helping our company with internal projects such multisite network maintenance, performance improvements and process documentation.
This role is partially client facing, so excellent communication and customer service skills are a must.
About Us:
The Modern Firm, LLC is a branding, website design and digital marketing agency for solo and small firm attorneys throughout the US. In business for 20 years, we have worked with 1200+ law firms in nearly every state (still holding out for Hawaii and Rhode Island) and have a dedicated and creative team of 13 remote employees and another 10+ regular contractors. We’re headquartered out of Ann Arbor, Michigan but our team, while mostly in the midwest, is from coast (NC) to coast (WA) to coast (FL) with CO, MN, IA, and OH in between.
About Our Clients:
We work exclusively with small law firms throughout the United States. The majority of our clients are solo to five-attorney firms. We go to great lengths to screen new clients and ensure that their needs and expectations are an overall good fit for our services and approach. Most of our clients are successful and established and are looking for a website to validate, enhance and further grow their practice. They are also typically overwhelmed with both being a lawyer and running a law firm. This is where we come in. When we are at our best we are essentially serving as their outsourced web and online marketing department, taking nearly everything related to their online presence off of their plate and onto ours. When we’re successful, we are helping our clients get more fulfillment out of running their practice and enabling them to help more people and do more of what they love.
About Our Websites:
The sites we create are custom built in Wordpress using a parent theme/framework we’ve custom developed for law firms. They are straightforward, fast and easy to navigate. They tell the firm’s story and give a feel for the firm’s personality. In addition to validating and legitimizing the law firm to prospective clients, our websites serve as a primary marketing tool. When combined with our online marketing services, the websites bring in a steady flow of prospective business. You can see examples here and in our portfolio.
Please note: All code is custom, no builder plugins or themes.
https://www.wsltrial.com/
https://www.modernfamilylawfirm.com/
https://www.modernfamilylawfirm.com/
https://www.bmartinlegal.com/
About The Job:
As stated above, this position has five primary components. Here is expanded information on each:
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Developing WordPress Themes.
Our design team will work to finalize a complete website design with the client. The files will then be sliced and prepared for coding. At that point, the person in this role will develop a WordPress child theme to apply the design and have it work with our parent framework. Typically the person in this role will be developing 1-2 themes per week.
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Troubleshoot Theme and Plugin Issues.
From time to time issues (speed performance, plugin compatibility) come up with a single website, or batch of websites, that require the knowledge of a developer to fix. Sometimes these issues are urgent, many times they are planned updates such as fixing issues that arise from WordPress version updates.
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Assist Clients with Theme or Functionality Changes
At times, clients request updates to their themes or website functionality that go beyond what our primary customer service person can do. As needed, the person in this role would work with our support person and client to discover their needs, propose solutions and implement the chosen option. Examples include updating the color theme to a website, or adding a plugin that allows for eSignature on Gravity Forms, or setting up a custom post type for a video library, or setting up a payment gateway.
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Assist Helpdesk Staff During Busy Times.
Most of the time, our helpdesk staff will be on the front line with client support requests. However, during busy times, or when they are out of the office, assistance by the person in this role will be needed to cover the gap and ensure that we are staying responsive to clients.
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Helping Our Company With Internal Projects.
There is no shortage of work to do! During time between client projects we are always looking to make improvements to our core framework and processes. In-house projects could include rolling out framework updates, updating older themes to remove depreciated code, documenting processes to help with training of other team members.
A Week In The Job May Look Like:
- Working on coding a new theme (heads down, 7-9 hours)
- Working with our support team and client to choose and configure a plugin (2-3 hours)
- Working with our support team and a client to update their website colors to match a new logo (3-4 hours)
- Implementing feedback from the design team on a theme you coded (4-5 hours)
- Starting work on another theme (heads down, 7-9 hours)
- Coordinating with our Senior Developer to implement framework updates (5 hours)
- Helping our marketing team with getting a client’s website to perform better in page speed tests (2-3 hours)
- Making last minute urgent changes to a theme prior to go-live. (1-2 hours)
- Answering miscellaneous questions from clients in the helpdesk while providing extra coverage. (3-4 hours)
The ideal candidate will have the following:
Essential Qualifications:
- WordPress child theme development skills. Build themes from scratch.
- Experience with the WordPress plugin ecosystem
- Experience with WordPress MultiSite and Parent/Child theme setup
- Experience with jQuery, Javascript, PHP and databases. (MySQL/MariaDB)
- Basic graphic editing skills (cropping, resizing, light touching-up)
- Ability to work inside of Adobe Photoshop (PSDs)
- Strong writing and communication skills
- Willingness to learn supplementary/complementary skills as needed to support your job tasks
- Ability to have 4+ hours overlap with 9am-5pm EST working hours.
Strongly Preferred Qualifications
- Working knowledge of domain registrations, cPanel/WHM, website hosting, CDNs and DNS
- Mac user
- Experience working remotely and with remote teams
- Excellent Giphy selection skills for our company chat :-)
- Familiarity with the Zoho suite of products
Pay, Benefits and Details:
- $55,000-65,000 yearly salary
- Medical / Dental / Vision insurance (we cover 70% of employee cost)
- Performance bonuses
- 100% remote but must have significant overlap with 9am-5pm EST workday. Can also work at our HQ in Ann Arbor, MI
- Simple IRA retirement plan with 2% match
- Subsidy for home office expenses or coworking space
- Unlimited PTO
To Apply
You must be based in the USA.
Please send a cover letter, resume, three references, the city and state you’ll be working from and up to 3 complete wordpress themes that you’ve developed to jobs@themodernfirm.com. (Please remember, no website builders such as Divi or BeaverBuilder, Elementor, etc)
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