Experience level: Senior: 8+ years of Drupal development, including lead/architect responsibility

Primary ownership: Drupal architecture, security, performance, and overall technical direction

Allocation: Part-time to majority (approx. 50–75%), scaled to project phase

Role summary

The technical anchor for the engagement and the primary point of contact for the partner firm’s design and UX leads. This person sets the architectural direction, defines security and performance standards, and ensures the technical build properly supports the accessible, public-facing experience the partner firm is designing.

Key responsibilities

·     Own the overall Drupal architecture, including content modeling, entity and taxonomy structure, and decisions on contributed modules versus custom code.

·     Define and enforce security standards appropriate to a public-sector–adjacent academic platform, including patching policy, access control, and secure handling of payment-related flows.

·     Own performance strategy: caching layers, Pantheon edge configuration, and database query optimization.

·     Provide the technical scaffolding that supports accessibility (semantic markup in templates, ARIA support in custom components), in partnership with the partner firm’s accessibility leads.

·     Set technical standards and review work across the team, including migration design and the Commerce/Nelnet integration.

·     Serve as the primary technical liaison to the partner firm and to client stakeholders.

Required skills & experience

·     8+ years building and architecting Drupal sites, with demonstrated lead or architect experience.

·     Deep knowledge of Drupal performance tuning, caching, and security best practices.

·     Strong understanding of content architecture and migration planning.

·     Experience working alongside design/UX teams and delivering accessible (WCAG-aligned) front-end implementations.

·     Comfortable operating in a Pantheon/Composer/Git environment.