Drupal Frontend Engineer

Job Description:  

Short Description:

Client requires the services of a contractor Web Developer with strong Drupal expertise to support the development, maintenance, and modernization of District government websites, including DC.gov and associated agency digital properties. 

Complete Description:
 
 Employment Type: Contract w2/1099/C2C

Scope of Work

•             Design, develop, and maintain Drupal-based websites supporting DC.gov and District agency platforms.

•             Build and customize Drupal modules, themes, content types, taxonomies, and views per agency requirements.

•             Perform Drupal core and contributed module updates, security patches, and version migrations (e.g., Drupal 7 to Drupal 10/11).

•             Integrate Drupal sites with enterprise systems, APIs, and third-party services.

•             Ensure deliverables comply with Section 508, WCAG 2.1 AA, and District web standards.

•             Apply web security best practices consistent with Client and federal cybersecurity guidelines.

•             Collaborate with Client project managers, UX designers, content strategists, and agency stakeholders.

•             Produce technical documentation, code comments, and operational runbooks.

•             Provide Tier 3 production support and participate in deployment activities, including occasional after-hours work.

Required Technical Skills

HTML & Markup

•             Strong command of semantic HTML5: sectioning elements, headings hierarchy, lists, tables, and forms.

•             Solid grasp of web accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA): ARIA roles and attributes, keyboard navigation, focus management, alt text, and accessible form labeling.

 

•             Familiarity with structured data and SEO markup: meta tags, Open Graph, Twitter cards, and Schema.org/JSON-LD.

•             Understanding of how Drupal renders markup through Twig, and the ability to produce clean, valid output via template overrides.

CSS & Styling

•             Deep working knowledge of modern CSS layout: Flexbox and CSS Grid, with sound judgment about when to use each.

•             Proficiency with responsive design: media queries, fluid typography, container queries, and mobile-first methodology.

•             Command of the cascade, specificity, and inheritance, with the ability to debug specificity conflicts rather than reaching for important

•             Comfort with CSS custom properties (variables), modern color/spacing tokens, and maintainable theming patterns.

•             Awareness of cross-browser compatibility, vendor prefixing strategy, and progressive enhancement.

 

Nice to Have

◦              Strong SCSS/SASS skills: nesting, mixins, functions, partials, and a disciplined file architecture.

◦              A consistent CSS methodology such as BEM, and an understanding of how it maps onto Drupal's class conventions.

◦              Familiarity with CSS transitions, transforms, and animations, used with attention to performance and reduced-motion preferences.

JavaScript

•             Solid command of modern JavaScript (ES6+): arrow functions, destructuring, modules, promises, and async/await.

•             Strong DOM manipulation and event-handling skills, including event delegation and performance-conscious listeners.

 

•             Fluency with the Fetch API and asynchronous data handling, including JSON parsing and error handling.

•             Working knowledge of Drupal's JavaScript layer: Drupal.behaviors, once(), drupalSettings, and the AJAX framework

•             Understanding of how to attach and scope JS correctly through the Libraries API rather than inline scripts.

•             Familiarity with debugging via browser DevTools: breakpoints, the network panel, performance profiling, and the console.

 

Nice to Have

◦              Awareness of frontend performance: deferring/async loading, minimizing reflows, debouncing/throttling, and avoiding render-blocking scripts.

◦              Experience with a build/tooling pipeline (Webpack, Vite, or Gulp) and with linting/formatting (ESLint, Prettier, Stylelint).

◦              Exposure to a modern framework (React/Vue) is a plus, particularly for decoupled or partially decoupled Drupal frontends.

 

Drupal

Site Administration & Configuration Management

•             Fluency with the Drupal 9/10/11 admin UI: content types, fields, vocabularies, view modes, form/display modes, blocks, menus, URL aliases, and redirects.

•             Solid command of Configuration Management workflows: config export/import, config_split for environment-specific config, config_ignore for protected config.

•             Strong grasp of user access control: roles, permissions, content moderation workflows, and custom workflow states/transitions.

•             Demonstrated expertise with Views: complex queries, contextual filters, relationships, exposed filters/sorts, output rewriting, and REST exports.

•             Experience administering the Media Library, image styles, responsive image styles, and crop/focal-point strategies.

 

•             A clear mental model of what belongs in config vs. content vs. state vs. settings.php.

 

Theming & Frontend

•             Strong Twig skills: template suggestions, template preprocessing, and theme hook implementations.

•             Comfort with the Libraries API: defining JS/CSS, managing dependencies, and conditional loading.

•             Experience with modern base themes (Olivero/Stable9) and component-based theming.

•             Familiarity with Single Directory Components (SDC) for Drupal 10.3+.

•             Solid responsive design fundamentals, a disciplined CSS methodology (e.g., BEM), and SCSS/SASS proficiency.

 

Multi-Domain / Multi-Site (Nice to Have)

◦              Hands-on experience with the Domain Access module: domain entities, domain access fields on content/users/blocks, and current-domain negotiation.

◦              Practical command of the Domain Config module, including domain-specific config overrides and override precedence (settings.php > Domain Config UI > base config)

◦              A clear understanding of how config overrides cascade, and why programmatic overrides in settings.php will silently take precedence over UI changes

◦              Familiarity with cache contexts and invalidation in a multi-domain context.

◦              Experience with domain-aware menu, block, and pathauto strategies, and with cross-domain content sharing vs. domain-restricted content patterns

 

Security

•             Disciplined input sanitization and output escaping (XSS, HTML, URL filters; Twig autoescaping).

 

•             A reflexive habit of using placeholders to prevent SQL injection and applying access checks on entity queries.

•             Working knowledge of file-upload security, CSRF tokens, and trusted host patterns.

•             Experience conducting permission audits and reviewing for privilege escalation.

 

DevOps, Deployment & Tooling

•             Understanding of Git workflows: feature branches, rebase vs. merge, conflict resolution, and hotfix patterns.

•             Strong Drush proficiency, including cache rebuilds, config import/export, user management.

•             Competence with Composer for project scaffolding, patching, and autoloader generation.

•             Experience with a local development environment, ideally Lando (DDEV/Docksal also welcome).

Nice to Have

◦              Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines (BLT, GitHub Actions, or Acquia Pipelines).

◦              Hands-on Acquia Cloud experience: environments, Cloud Hooks, code/database/files workflow, and Acquia CLI.

◦              Comfort with multi-database configuration and routing.

Integration & Standards (Nice to Have)

◦              Experience building and consuming REST APIs: JSON:API, the REST module, and custom REST resources.

◦              Experience with common third-party integrations: analytics and marketing automation.

 

Working Style & Collaboration

•             The ability to write technical documentation that a non-developer content editor can follow.

 

•             A methodical diagnostic approach — able to walk through debugging complex issues without guesswork.

•             Good code-review hygiene: readable commits, descriptive PRs, and openness to feedback.

•             Adherence to Drupal community coding standards (PHPCS with the Drupal and Drupal Practice rulesets).

 

CONTRACT JOB DESCRIPTION
 Responsibilities:
Performs programming and technical work for website and Internet development.
 
 Minimum Education/Certification Requirements:
Bachelor’s degree in IT or related field or equivalent experience

 

Skills Matrix 

·       16+ yrs. performing specialized (often advanced) programming and technical development for the Internet

·       Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field (equivalent experience may be substituted).

·       At least three (3) years of hands-on Drupal development (Drupal 7 and 9, 10, or 11 required).

·       Demonstrated proficiency in PHP, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and Twig.

·       Experience with Composer, Drush, Git, and MySQL/MariaDB.

·       Working knowledge of Section 508 and WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards.

·       Acquia Certified Developer or Site Builder credential.

·       Experience with headless/decoupled Drupal (JSON:API, GraphQL).

·       Familiarity with Acquia Cloud, Pantheon, or AWS hosting environments.

·       Prior experience supporting District, state, or federal government web platforms.

·       Knowledge of DevSecOps, CI/CD pipelines, and Docker.