Development Manager

Location: Remote, West Palm Beach, Florida, United States Employment Type: Full time

Description

As a Development Manager at Awesome Motive, you'll join the WPForms team as a hands-on technical leader who isn't afraid to get their hands dirty. This is not your typical management role - we're looking for someone who thrives as both a leader and an individual contributor. You will:

• Seamlessly switch between writing production code, architecting solutions, and leading a team of talented developers.
• Maintain individual contributions while driving team excellence, mentoring developers, and ensuring WordPress plugins deliver exceptional quality to millions of users worldwide.

Role split:

• Approximately 40-50% hands-on technical work
• 50-60% leadership and management responsibilities

The ideal candidate:

• Demonstrates extreme ownership and high agency.
• Takes full accountability for both team outcomes and individual deliverables.
• Is comfortable working daily in the codebase, leading by example.
• Makes confident technical decisions autonomously while collaborating with Product Manager.

To love this role, here’s the type of person you are:

• Embodies extreme ownership - takes charge and delivers results.
• Operates with high agency - identifies problems, creates solutions, executes independently.
• A player-coach who leads from the front by example.
• Excellent communicator in verbal and written English ensuring transparency and clarity.
• Takes pride in individual contributions and team success; measures by both metrics.
• Mentors through pair programming and code reviews rather than just meetings/presentations.
• Gives and receives critical feedback constructively and acts on it quickly.
• Passionate about building great products and great teams.
• Capable of leading Teams of Teams.

Common responsibilities include (but are not limited to):

Leadership (50-60% of your time):

• Lead, mentor, develop a team of developers through hands-on collaboration.
• Facilitate technical discussions.
• Remove blockers and shield the team from distractions while maintaining productivity.
• Drive hiring decisions; help build a world-class engineering team.
• Establish/maintain development processes enabling high velocity delivery.
• Collaborate with Product, QA, Design teams for alignment.
• Take full ownership of team deliverables and deadlines—no excuses.
• Foster culture of extreme ownership and high agency within the team.

Technical leadership (40-50% of your time):

• Write production-quality code for critical features and complex problems.
• Architect technical solutions; make key technical decisions.
• Evaluate, implement best practices for AI tools adoption to enhance productivity while maintaining code ownership/security standards.
• Lead by example via hands-on coding, debugging, problem-solving.
• Perform code reviews ensuring code quality standards are exceeded.
• Optimize performance/scalability for millions of WordPress users.
• Drive technical excellence through direct contribution to codebase.
• Prepare/review technical design documents (Pitches) for major features.
• Troubleshoot/resolve challenging technical issues directly.

Requirements

Technical Requirements:

• Proven web development experience: 7+ years.
• Hands-on engineering leadership experience: 3+ years.
• Strong proficiency in PHP (modern PHP 7+/8+): 5+ years.
• Experience with Laravel or other modern PHP frameworks.
• Experience leveraging AI-powered coding assistants to accelerate development workflows & improve code quality across the team.
• Extensive experience with WordPress plugin development:4+ years.
• Expert-level understanding of JavaScript (ES6+), HTML5,CSS3.
• Deep experience with MySQL,database optimization & scaling.
• Mastery of software design patterns,SOLID principles & clean architecture.

p - Proven track record shipping production code regularly while in leadership role. p - Experience with Git workflows CI/CD pipelines & DevOps practices. p - Experience with cloud platforms(AWS Google Cloud) & containerization(Docker Kubernetes). p - Strong experience with RESTful APIs & third-party integrations. p - Demonstrated ability to debug & solve complex technical problems independently. p

Leadership Requirements:

p - Proven experience leading engineering teams while maintaining individual contribution.p - Track record mentoring developers & improving team capabilities.p - Ability to make autonomous decisions & take full accountability for outcomes.p - Experience balancing technical debt with feature delivery.p - Ability to manage special projects while collaborating closely with Project Management.p - Experience working in fast-paced high-growth environments.p - Ability to keep complex ideas/features simple(Simplicity is a core value).p - English at upper intermediate level or higher.p - Experience leading fully remote distributed teams.p

Basic Requirements:

p - Personal computer with internet access.p - Availability for audio/video meetings between9am -5pm ET.p

Bonus points if you also have:

p - Experience with React Vue.js or other modern JavaScript frameworks.p - Experience scaling WordPress to handle millions of users.p - Significant open-source or WordPress core contributions.p - Experience with microservices & distributed systems.p - Background in SaaS platforms & subscription-based products.p - Experience with performance optimization at scale.p - Experience integrating AI/ML features into WordPress plugins or SaaS products.p - Previous player-coach role at high-growth company.p - Track record building/scaling engineering teams from scratch.p

Benefits

p - Competitive Salary.p - Term Life Insurance & Accidental Death & Dismemberment during employment.p - Health/Dental/Vision Insurance benefits for full-time U.S employees.p - Health Insurance benefits for employees in multiple countries globally.p - Work from home globally; company hours9am–5pm ET(UTC−5).p-Flexible PTO after90 days.- Holidays based on location.- Paid Parental Leave.- Software/books/course reimbursement for continued learning.- Company travel costs covered including annual retreats/team meetups.- Additional perks: Welcome Box Anniversary Gifts Technology Stipend.- Opportunity to solve meaningful problems making a difference.- Work alongside top industry professionals daily.- No politics or jerks culture. p## Remote Work Mention: pThis is a remote position;the team is spread globally but home base is Florida USA operating hours9am–5pm ET(UTC−5). Full coverage not required but some availability during that window is needed.