Full-Stack WordPress Developer/Technical Project Manager, Punch & Taste

PUNCH, an online magazine about drinks and drinking culture, and TASTE, an online magazine about food culture and home cooking, both of which are published in collaboration with Penguin Random House, are looking for an organized, creative, full-stack developer / technical project manager to help support both brands. 

About you:

You enjoy making beautiful, responsive websites on all sorts of screens and devices. You have opinions on UX and some design skills to back it up, even though your design skills may be self-taught. You love to delight your users, both the customers and the editors, and you get to know them. You bring your creative brain to work and on the better days you take some time to think and write/sketch/whiteboard and otherwise loaf about in a semi-directed way. 

You love working in WordPress and are able to work on the full stack, from the JS/HTML/CSS front end, to the PHP code in the middle, all the way back to the MySQL database. You enjoy that little pang of satisfaction when your API integration works the first time (and you know that almost that never happens). You can rattle off the more common verbs from the HTTP spec and know when to use one and not the other. You appreciate a well-written manual. You are comfortable using command-line tools, you understand WordPress scaling and caching techniques, and you have worked on cloud-based, consumer-facing WordPress installations. You use Git and are always pushing code, you use merge requests even if it’s just you working on it, and you like doing peer reviews (OK “like” is maybe too strong a word, but you do see the value in it). You understand the concept of continuous integration and prefer working that way. You prefer your deployments to be triggered by a Git commit. You are often tidying the code base, weeding the garden, polishing the bottles, swabbing the decks, etc. (choose your favorite metaphor). 

You prefer working in a collaborative, respectful, diverse, cross-functional team. You can craft the technical aspects of a statement of work, and collaborate effectively with contract designers and developers. You are aware of agile team practices and perhaps have even championed them in your previous work. You pitch in to meet a team goal, sometimes doing tasks that aren’t strictly in the job description, and you have a sense of humor about it. You understand the spiky nature of campaign-based consumer website traffic, and that it takes communication, planning, coordination among teams, and foresight to ensure successful campaigns. You have used tools such as JIRA, Trello, Basecamp, Asana, and the like on work projects, and in your nerdier moments have maybe considered using them to manage your travel planning or closet maintenance. You’re not sure if it’s OK to admit that. 

You know how to integrate tracking pixels, website analytics, and similar technologies and can do so in a way that follows a corporate policy. You understand basic SEO tactics. You are aware that website security and consumer data privacy are very important, and can work with corporate IT teams to ensure that compliance requirements are met. You know the basics of securing a WordPress site from a developer standpoint, but you’re not a security expert. You are aware of the OWASP Top 10 and how to mitigate the more common risks on a WordPress site. 

We realize some of you require a bulleted list, so here are some desired skills for this role:

• WordPress development for growing scale on a cloud-based, cultural journalism website
• PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Git, Object-Oriented design, basic bash/terminal skills
• Contemporary JavaScript build tools, package managers, transpilers, etc.
• Basic tech project management skills, collaborative, agile approach
• Basic UX design skill and sensibility

This is a great opportunity for a well-rounded technologist looking to join a fun, diverse, inclusive startup team within the larger Penguin Random House organization. Penguin Random House values the array of talents and perspectives that a diverse workforce brings. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, religion, age, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or protected veteran status.

Employees are eligible for our comprehensive benefits program, kindly provide your cover letter and resume. 

PUNCH is a James Beard Award-winning online magazine covering contemporary drinking culture in all of its complexity. On PUNCH, you’ll find more than 1,000 cocktail recipes and dozens of reviews and city guides, but you’ll also find personal essays, rich photojournalism and feature stories that tackle everything from gender inequality to cultural appropriation to sustainability. Our goal is not only to help our readers drink better, but to drink smarter.

TASTE is a James Beard Award-winning online magazine reported from the frontlines of today’s quickly moving food culture. America is a diverse place, and home cooks of all backgrounds are drawing from a wide range of cultures. Fish sauce, za’atar, chipotle, kimchi—these are the ingredients of the modern pantry, and they inform how we cook. TASTE publishes stories that celebrate and explore this evolution, be it through reported features, personal essays, fist-shaking opinion columns and stories that bridge travel and the home kitchen.

Penguin Random House is the leading adult and children’s publishing house in North America, the United Kingdom and many other regions around the world.  In publishing the best books in every genre and subject for all ages, we are committed to quality, excellence in execution, and innovation throughout the entire publishing process: editorial, design, marketing, publicity, sales, production, and distribution.  Our vibrant and diverse international community of nearly 250 publishing brands and imprints include Ballantine Bantam Dell, Berkley, Clarkson Potter, Crown, DK, Doubleday, Dutton, Grosset & Dunlap, Little Golden Books, Knopf, Modern Library, Pantheon, Penguin Books, Penguin Press, Penguin Random House Audio, Penguin Young Readers, Portfolio, Puffin, Putnam, Random House, Random House Children’s Books, Riverhead, Ten Speed Press, Viking, and Vintage, among others.  More information can be found at http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/.

Penguin Random House values the array of talents and perspectives that a diverse workforce brings. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, religion, age, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or protected veteran status.