Experienced Software Engineer
Posted on: January 28, 2026 | Remote-Global
Company Name: Automattic | Application Deadline: Rolling Basis
Team: Engineering (Code Wranglers) | Reports To: Engineering Lead
Division: Product Development | Employment Type: Full-Time
Location: Remote (Global-70+ Countries)
Schedule: Flexible (Self-Directed) | Experience Level: 03+ Years
Build the Future of the Open Web
WordPress powers over 40% of all websites globally, standing as a beacon for the open web in an era increasingly dominated by walled gardens and proprietary platforms. At Automattic, we're committed to ensuring users maintain ownership and control over their data, expression, and digital freedom—whether they're building business websites, online stores, or personal blogs.
As an Experienced Software Engineer at Automattic, you'll join a mission-driven organization behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, Jetpack, and numerous other platforms that democratize publishing, commerce, and communication worldwide. This isn't just another development position—it's an opportunity to shape tools used by millions while contributing to open source projects that define modern web development.
We're seeking talented engineers worldwide who are excited about Automattic's product ecosystem and passionate about making the web a better, more accessible place. You'll work within a fully distributed team of over 1,400 Automatticians spanning nearly every corner of the globe, united by shared values and commitment to technical excellence.
Position Overview
The Experienced Software Engineer role at Automattic represents a unique opportunity to work on some of the internet's most influential platforms while enjoying unprecedented flexibility and autonomy. You'll contribute to products serving hundreds of millions of users, tackling complex technical challenges that exist at true internet scale.
Your work will span multiple products within Automattic's ecosystem, from enhancing WooCommerce's e-commerce capabilities to refining Gutenberg's block editor, advancing WordPress.com features, or improving Tumblr's social networking experience. The diversity of these platforms ensures you'll continuously encounter new technical challenges while building expertise across different domains and technologies.
Automattic's engineering culture emphasizes collaboration, quality, and continuous improvement. You'll participate in peer code reviews, contribute to architectural decisions, and help shape development practices that enable our global team to ship code multiple times daily. The company's commitment to open source means most of your work will be publicly available under the GPL, contributing to the broader developer community while building your professional reputation.
This remote position offers flexibility regarding when and where you work, trusting you to manage your time effectively while meeting team commitments. Many professionals exploring opportunities in distributed engineering teams find it valuable to research how leading technology companies structure remote work cultures and maintain code quality across geographical boundaries, as these factors significantly impact daily work experiences and long-term career satisfaction.
The engineering team at Automattic includes diverse professionals who've deliberately chosen careers focused on open source development, scalable systems, and products that genuinely improve users' lives. Understanding what motivates successful engineers in these environments often involves exploring how different organizations balance technical challenges, creative freedom, and meaningful impact.
Recent Projects and Technical Focus Areas
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
AI has become central to many new product developments at Automattic, powering everything from content generation and image creation to development workflow optimization. You'll have opportunities to work on AI-powered features that help users create better content, automate repetitive tasks, and discover new possibilities within our platforms.
The integration of AI isn't limited to user-facing features—it's transforming how we approach development workflows, code review processes, and system optimization. Engineers at Automattic actively explore how AI can enhance productivity while maintaining the human judgment and creativity essential to building exceptional products.
WooCommerce Platform Development
WooCommerce stands as the world's most popular and flexible e-commerce platform, powering millions of online stores globally. The engineering team works tirelessly to provide merchants complete control over their stores while ensuring the platform remains fast, stable, and capable of scaling from small startups to enterprise operations.
Current focus areas include payment processing innovations, inventory management optimizations, mobile commerce enhancements, and integrations with modern fulfillment and marketing tools. You might work on improving checkout flows that process billions of dollars in transactions annually, optimizing database queries serving millions of products, or building APIs that connect merchants with the broader e-commerce ecosystem.
Gutenberg Block Editor
Gutenberg represents a fundamental reimagining of the WordPress editing experience, introducing clean abstractions that benefit both users and developers. The block-based approach enables unprecedented flexibility in content creation while maintaining WordPress's hallmark usability.
Engineering work on Gutenberg spans JavaScript frameworks, React components, performance optimization for complex documents, accessibility enhancements, and extensibility APIs that enable thousands of plugin developers to build innovative block types. This project demonstrates Automattic's willingness to tackle ambitious technical challenges that improve experiences for hundreds of millions of users.
Tumblr Social Network
Tumblr serves as a microblogging social network where users create, share, and follow content they love. The platform presents unique technical challenges around real-time feeds, content discovery algorithms, media processing at scale, and community moderation tools.
Engineers working on Tumblr address problems spanning recommendation systems, abuse prevention, mobile application development, and infrastructure scaling to handle spikes in viral content. The platform's creative, diverse community drives constant innovation in features that enable new forms of expression and connection.
Additional Platform Work
Beyond these flagship products, Automattic maintains an ecosystem including Simplenote, Jetpack, Longreads, Day One, PocketCasts, Beeper, and more. You can explore the complete product portfolio on Automattic's website to understand the full scope of potential projects and technical challenges you might engage with.
Key Responsibilities
Software Development and Engineering
- Write Production-Quality Code: Develop, test, and deploy features across Automattic's product ecosystem using primarily PHP and JavaScript, with opportunities to work in other languages and frameworks as projects require
- Architect Scalable Solutions: Design systems and components that perform reliably at massive scale, serving millions of concurrent users while maintaining responsiveness and stability
- Contribute to Open Source: Build features and improvements that will be publicly released under the GPL, contributing to the global developer community while advancing Automattic's products
- Ship Frequently: Participate in Automattic's continuous deployment culture, releasing code multiple times daily with confidence supported by comprehensive testing and peer review processes
- Debug Complex Issues: Investigate and resolve challenging technical problems spanning frontend interactions, backend services, database performance, caching layers, and third-party integrations
Collaboration and Code Quality
- Engage in Peer Code Review: Provide thoughtful, constructive feedback on teammates' code while incorporating their insights into your own work, maintaining high quality standards across the codebase
- Participate in Technical Discussions: Contribute to architectural decisions, technology selections, and process improvements through Automattic's various communication channels
- Mentor and Learn: Share your expertise with colleagues while remaining open to learning from their diverse perspectives and experiences
- Document Thoughtfully: Create clear documentation that helps future developers (including yourself) understand system behavior, design decisions, and maintenance requirements
- Collaborate Across Time Zones: Work effectively with globally distributed teammates, leveraging asynchronous communication while engaging synchronously when beneficial
Product and User Focus
- Obsess Over Quality: Sweat the details that distinguish exceptional user experiences from merely functional ones, considering performance, accessibility, and edge cases
- Understand User Needs: Consider how technical decisions impact users across Automattic's diverse customer base, from individual bloggers to enterprise merchants
- Balance Abstraction and Pragmatism: Create elegant, maintainable solutions that solve real problems without over-engineering or introducing unnecessary complexity
- Think About Scale: Consider performance implications, resource utilization, and system behavior under load from initial design through implementation
- Iterate Based on Feedback: Incorporate user insights, analytics data, and team perspectives into continuous product improvements
Professional Development and Engagement
- Continuously Learn: Expand your technical knowledge across programming languages, frameworks, architectural patterns, and emerging technologies relevant to Automattic's products
- Attend Team Meetups: Travel 3-4 weeks annually to meet teammates in person, strengthening relationships and collaboration that transcend digital communication
- Contribute to Culture: Help maintain Automattic's positive, supportive, inclusive culture where cohesive teams focus on building useful products for customers
- Provide Process Feedback: Share insights about hiring, onboarding, development workflows, and team practices that could improve the engineering organization
Professionals considering careers at distributed software companies often benefit from understanding how these organizations maintain code quality, coordinate across time zones, and create belonging despite physical distance. Researching best practices in remote engineering through various industry resources can provide valuable context when evaluating whether specific distributed environments align with personal working preferences and career goals.
Required Skills and Qualifications
Technical Expertise and Experience
- Production Experience Across Technologies: Demonstrated proficiency with multiple programming languages, frameworks, and paradigms in real-world production environments. While Automattic primarily uses PHP and JavaScript, we value engineers who bring diverse technical perspectives and are eager to become experts in our core technologies.
- Comfort with PHP and JavaScript: Willingness and ability to develop expertise in PHP and JavaScript even if they haven't been your primary languages historically. You don't need to be an expert when applying, but you should be enthusiastic about mastering these technologies that power Automattic's ecosystem.
- Scale Experience: Proven ability to work with systems at significant scale—whether through backend performance optimization, handling high-traffic scenarios, managing complex deployments, or serving diverse user bases numbering in the millions
- Understanding of Abstraction: Ability to think across multiple layers of abstraction, understanding how your work interacts with components both above and below your immediate focus. You recognize that abstraction involves costs as well as benefits and make thoughtful tradeoffs.
- Debugging Proficiency: View debugging as an engaging intellectual challenge rather than a tedious chore. You methodically investigate issues, form hypotheses, and systematically narrow down root causes across complex systems.
Professional Competencies
- Quality Obsession: Genuinely care about the quality and details of your work, taking pride in creating solutions that are elegant, maintainable, and performant
- Collaborative Mindset: Work effectively within distributed teams, communicating clearly through written channels while engaging constructively in discussions spanning different time zones and perspectives
- Self-Direction: Manage your time and priorities effectively in a high-autonomy environment where you'll have significant control over your schedule and approach
- Openness to Feedback: Receive code review comments and architectural suggestions graciously, viewing them as opportunities to improve rather than personal criticism
- Initiative and Ownership: Take responsibility for features from conception through deployment and maintenance, proactively addressing issues and seeking improvements
Cultural Fit and Values Alignment
- Passion for Open Source: Enthusiasm for contributing to publicly available code that benefits the broader development community, not just proprietary commercial products
- Commitment to the Open Web: Belief in users' rights to own and control their data, expression, and digital presence rather than being locked into proprietary platforms
- Kindness and Inclusivity: Treat colleagues and users with respect and empathy, contributing to Automattic's positive, supportive culture
- Intellectual Curiosity: Genuine interest in learning new technologies, understanding system behaviors, and exploring how technical decisions impact users and business outcomes
- Travel Flexibility: Ability and willingness to travel 3-4 weeks per year for team meetups that strengthen relationships and facilitate collaboration
Understanding what distinguishes successful engineers in distributed, open source environments often involves researching how these organizations approach technical challenges, maintain code quality, and foster innovation without traditional office structures. Many professionals find that exploring employee perspectives through various career platforms helps them assess whether specific company cultures align with their values and working styles.
How We Work at Automattic
Distributed and Global Workforce
Automattic operates as a genuinely distributed company with employees in over 70 countries, speaking more than 100 different languages. This isn't remote work as an accommodation—it's a fundamental aspect of how the company was built and continues to operate. The distributed model enables Automattic to access exceptional talent globally while giving employees unprecedented location flexibility.
Working in this environment requires strong written communication skills, comfort with asynchronous collaboration, and ability to coordinate across time zones. The company has developed sophisticated practices and cultural norms that make distributed work effective, which you'll learn through onboarding and daily practice.
Flexible Work Arrangements
Automattic offers genuinely flexible work arrangements, trusting team members to work when they feel most productive and creative. There's no expectation that you'll be online during specific hours or maintain a traditional 9-to-5 schedule. Instead, you'll coordinate with your immediate team to ensure adequate overlap for collaboration while maintaining autonomy over your daily schedule.
This flexibility enables engineers to work during their peak productivity hours, accommodate personal obligations, and design work patterns that support sustained creativity and wellbeing. The open vacation policy extends this philosophy, eliminating arbitrary limits on time off and trusting employees to balance professional responsibilities with personal needs.
Culture of Kindness and Support
Automattic deliberately cultivates a culture emphasizing kindness to colleagues and users alike. The company builds cohesive teams focused on creating useful products for customers rather than engaging in internal politics or unhealthy competition.
This positive, supportive environment manifests through collaborative code reviews, helpful Slack discussions, mentorship opportunities, and leadership that genuinely values employee wellbeing alongside business outcomes. The inclusive culture welcomes diverse perspectives and backgrounds, recognizing that varied experiences strengthen both technical solutions and organizational decision-making.
Open Source Philosophy
The vast majority of Automattic's work releases under the GPL (General Public License), reflecting deep commitment to open source principles. Engineers contribute to projects that benefit the entire developer community, not just Automattic's commercial interests.
This open source focus means your work gains visibility beyond the company, building your professional reputation while contributing to technologies millions of developers rely on daily. It also means working with transparency, designing for extensibility, and considering how third-party developers will interact with the systems you build.
Continuous Deployment and Quality Practices
Automattic ships code multiple times daily, enabled by comprehensive peer code review, continuous integration testing, and cultural emphasis on quality. The global workforce means someone is always available to deploy, monitor, and respond to issues, creating true 24/7 engineering capability.
This rapid deployment cadence requires disciplined engineering practices, thorough testing, and systems designed for safe, incremental changes. You'll participate in code reviews that catch issues before deployment, monitor metrics after releases, and contribute to practices that enable speed without sacrificing stability.
Communication and Collaboration
Despite being fully distributed, Automattic maintains intensive communication through Slack, P2 blogs, video calls, and other channels. You're welcome and encouraged to participate in discussions spanning the entire company, not just your immediate team.
This open communication culture means you'll have visibility into product decisions, technical challenges, and strategic discussions that would be hidden behind closed doors in traditional organizations. It also means taking responsibility for keeping teammates informed about your work and proactively seeking input when needed.
Learning and Development Support
Automattic encourages continuous learning and development, supporting employees with expense coverage for courses, conferences, and tools that enhance their capabilities. The company enables easy internal mobility, allowing engineers to explore different products, technologies, and roles as their interests evolve.
Coaching and mentorship opportunities connect you with experienced Automatticians who can guide your technical growth and career progression. The culture values curiosity and experimentation, creating space for engineers to try new approaches and learn from both successes and failures.
Many professionals considering positions at fully distributed technology companies research how these organizations maintain engineering quality, coordinate product development, and create career growth opportunities without traditional office structures. Understanding these dynamics through various professional resources and employee perspectives can help candidates assess whether distributed engineering environments match their working preferences.
Career Growth and Development Opportunities
Automattic views engineering as a long-term career path with numerous opportunities for growth and specialization. The company promotes from within for technical leadership, engineering management, and senior individual contributor roles, demonstrating genuine commitment to employee advancement.
Technical Leadership Paths
Engineers can advance toward technical leadership by developing deep expertise in specific technologies, architectures, or product areas. Principal engineers and architects at Automattic influence technical strategy across products, mentor other developers, and solve the most complex challenges facing the organization.
These individual contributor paths enable engineers who prefer hands-on technical work to advance their careers and compensation without necessarily moving into people management. The company values both leadership tracks equally, recognizing that technical expertise and people management require different skill sets.
Engineering Management Opportunities
For engineers interested in people management, Automattic offers paths into team lead, engineering manager, and director roles. These positions involve hiring, mentoring, performance management, and strategic planning while remaining connected to technical work.
The company's commitment to promoting internally means current engineers have realistic opportunities to grow into management positions as the organization expands and new teams form around emerging products or initiatives.
Cross-Functional Mobility
Automattic's internal mobility culture enables engineers to transition across products, teams, and even functions as interests evolve. You might start working on WordPress.com, move to WooCommerce as you develop e-commerce expertise, then explore opportunities in data engineering, infrastructure, or product management.
This flexibility recognizes that interests and passions change throughout careers and that employee retention benefits when people can pursue new challenges without leaving the organization. The global, distributed structure makes mobility easier since moving teams doesn't require physical relocation.
Skill Development and Learning
The company supports professional development through conference attendance, online courses, technical books, and other learning resources. Engineers are encouraged to explore new technologies, contribute to open source projects outside Automattic, and develop expertise that benefits both their careers and the organization.
The open source nature of most work means you'll build a public portfolio demonstrating your capabilities to the broader development community. Contributing to widely-used projects like WordPress and WooCommerce provides recognition and opportunities that extend well beyond Automattic itself.
Understanding how technology companies invest in employee development and create advancement opportunities represents an important consideration when evaluating career moves. Researching organizational approaches to technical career progression through various professional networks and industry resources can provide valuable context about what distinguishes companies with genuine growth cultures from those with limited advancement paths.
Compensation and Benefits
Salary Range: $70,000 - $170,000 USD
Automattic offers straightforward, competitive base salaries providing financial clarity without complex variable components. Salary ranges remain consistent globally regardless of location, with payment made in local currency. This transparent approach ensures candidates understand earning potential from the application stage forward.
The company actively seeks high-caliber candidates whose skills and qualities create net positive impact for the organization. Compensation reflects your potential contribution and the impact you can bring, which may in some cases extend beyond the stated range for exceptional candidates.
Comprehensive Benefits Package
Benefits vary by country to optimize for local regulations, norms, and employee needs. Automattic provides detailed country-specific benefits information on their Benefits Page, ensuring transparency about what you'll receive based on your location.
Common benefits across locations typically include:
- Open Vacation Policy: Unlimited time off that trusts employees to balance personal needs with professional responsibilities
- Remote Work Support: Resources for creating productive home office environments, including equipment and technology
- Health Coverage: Medical, dental, and vision insurance (specifics vary by location)
- Professional Development: Expense coverage for courses, conferences, books, and other learning resources
- Flexible Schedule: Autonomy over when you work, enabling you to design schedules around personal preferences and peak productivity periods
- Communication Stipends: Support for internet and phone expenses associated with remote work
- Parental Leave: Policies supporting employees during major life transitions (varies by location)
- Equipment and Software: Technology and tools necessary to perform your role effectively
Additional Compensation Considerations
The base salary structure eliminates stress associated with commission targets, bonus calculations, or complex variable compensation. You'll know exactly what you're earning and can focus on building exceptional products rather than optimizing for financial metrics.
As a fully remote, globally distributed organization, Automattic has developed sophisticated approaches to equitable compensation across diverse regulatory environments. The company's commitment to fairness means continually evaluating how policies affect team members in different locations and adapting to ensure everyone receives meaningful support.
About Automattic
Now celebrating its 20th year, Automattic stands behind some of the internet's most influential platforms including WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, Simplenote, Jetpack, Longreads, Day One, PocketCasts, Beeper, and numerous other products collectively serving hundreds of millions of users worldwide.
The company's portfolio reflects a consistent philosophy: making the web a better, more accessible place where everyone can participate fully regardless of technical expertise or financial resources. WordPress alone powers over 40% of all websites globally, demonstrating the massive scale and impact of Automattic's work.
Mission and Values
Automattic's mission centers on democratizing three critical areas: publishing, commerce, and messaging. This means ensuring anyone with a story can share it, anyone with a product can sell it, and everyone can manage their communications from unified platforms.
By maintaining this balance and creating powerful tools accessible regardless of income, gender, politics, language, or location, Automattic enables fair competition in an internet landscape often dominated by gatekeepers and proprietary platforms. The company's open source commitment ensures that knowledge, code, and capabilities remain publicly available rather than locked behind corporate walls.
Recognition and Commitments
Automattic's designation as a Most Loved Company reflects genuine employee satisfaction and organizational culture that prioritizes wellbeing alongside business results. The Disability Confident Committed status demonstrates concrete action toward inclusive hiring practices and workplace accessibility.
The company maintains active Employee Resource Groups that create community among team members sharing common identities, experiences, or interests while driving meaningful organizational change around diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Open Source Leadership
The vast majority of Automattic's work releases under the GPL, reflecting deep commitment to open source principles that extend beyond legal licensing to cultural values emphasizing collaboration, transparency, and community benefit over purely commercial interests.
This philosophy means engineers contribute to projects that advance the entire web development ecosystem while building Automattic's products. Your work will be examined, used, and built upon by developers worldwide, creating impact that extends far beyond the company itself.
Meet Our Code Wranglers
Automattic's engineering team includes diverse professionals who bring varied backgrounds, expertise, and perspectives to technical challenges. You can meet some of our Code Wranglers—including Brandon, Jeremy, Mark, Jennifer, Roy, and Kat—to understand the different paths that lead engineers to Automattic and what keeps them engaged in this work.
These profiles demonstrate the range of technical interests, specializations, and career journeys represented within the engineering organization. Whether you're passionate about frontend development, backend systems, mobile applications, data engineering, or full-stack work, you'll find colleagues with aligned interests and complementary expertise.
Application Process and What to Expect
How to Apply
Interested candidates should submit applications through Automattic's official careers portal. The company has outlined complete details about the hiring process, including all steps and how they approach candidate evaluation, in their dedicated hiring documentation.
Critical Application Note: Automattic pays extra attention to your answers to the questions in the application form. These responses represent a significant part of the hiring process and receive the same careful review as any other evaluation step. Take time to provide thoughtful, detailed answers that demonstrate your technical expertise, communication skills, and cultural fit.
Application Components
Your application should include:
- Technical Background: Detailed information about your production experience with various programming languages, frameworks, and paradigms. Be specific about systems you've built, challenges you've solved, and scale you've worked at.
- Relevant Projects: Examples of work that demonstrate your capabilities, preferably including open source contributions, public repositories, or other artifacts that showcase your code quality and problem-solving approach.
- Thoughtful Question Responses: Comprehensive answers to application questions that reveal how you think about technical problems, approach collaboration, and align with Automattic's values.
- Communication Sample: Your application itself serves as a communication sample. Write clearly, concisely, and professionally, demonstrating the written communication skills essential for distributed teams.
What Happens Next
Automattic's hiring team reviews applications on a rolling basis. You can track your application status through MyGreenhouse, where you'll receive updates about your progress through the evaluation process.
The company is always iterating on its hiring process and welcomes feedback from candidates about what additional information would be helpful or how the experience could improve.
Timeline Expectations
Response times vary based on application volume and team availability. Automattic strives to communicate clearly about timeline expectations and provide updates even if decisions take longer than anticipated.
Understanding how technology companies structure engineering hiring processes can help candidates prepare effectively and set appropriate expectations. Many professionals find it valuable to research best practices in technical interviewing through various industry resources and professional development platforms before beginning application processes.
Accessibility and Equal Opportunity
Automattic is committed to ensuring an accessible hiring process for all candidates. If you need disability-related accommodations during application or interview processes, the company provides a dedicated form for requesting support. This commitment extends beyond compliance to genuine efforts ensuring everyone can participate fully in the hiring process.
All qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran. Automattic maintains compliance with all applicable employment laws and participates in E-Verify programs in certain locations as legally required.
The company's commitment to diversity isn't limited to legal compliance—it reflects core values recognizing that diverse teams create better products, solve problems more effectively, and better serve global customer bases representing every demographic imaginable.
Candidates can review Automattic's Privacy Policy to understand how the company handles applicant data throughout the hiring process and beyond. The company maintains transparency about data practices as part of its broader commitment to user privacy and control.
Why This Opportunity Matters
The Experienced Software Engineer position at Automattic represents far more than typical software development work. You'll contribute to platforms that democratize access to publishing, commerce, and communication tools empowering billions of people worldwide.
Every feature you build—whether improving WordPress's editor, optimizing WooCommerce's checkout flow, or enhancing Tumblr's discovery algorithms—directly impacts how millions of people express themselves, build businesses, and connect with communities online.
You'll work within a culture that respects engineering as legitimate long-term career work, invests in employee development, and creates genuine advancement opportunities. The fully remote, globally distributed environment offers unparalleled flexibility while maintaining the collaborative intensity that drives innovation and technical excellence.
For engineers who genuinely love building user-focused products, care deeply about code quality, and want their daily work contributing to a more open, accessible web, this Experienced Software Engineer role offers the perfect combination of technical challenges, meaningful impact, and cultural alignment.
If you're ready to join over 1,400 Automatticians working to democratize the web through open source technology, we encourage you to apply and share your story.
Automattic is an Equal Opportunity Employer Apply Now Through Automattic's Official Careers Portal
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