Support Engineer, WordPress VIP

<p><a href="">WordPress VIP</a>, the enterprise division of <a href="">Automattic</a>, is the world’s leading agile content management platform. Our suite of open solutions and services brings the ease and agility of <a href="">WordPress</a> to the world’s largest enterprises. Our large and growing ecosystem of technologies, services, and integrations is designed to bring the freedom and power of open source to our customers, who include Meta, CNN, Salesforce, and hundreds more.</p> <p>The Support Engineer role is responsible for providing advanced technical support to our enterprise customers, serving as an escalation point for complex issues that require deeper investigation. In this customer-facing role, you will handle challenging debugging scenarios, troubleshoot intricate application and platform issues, and help resolve problems that go beyond standard support workflows. You’ll work primarily through Zendesk tickets, collaborating closely with Support Engineers and Customer Success Engineers to ensure timely, high-quality resolutions while building your technical expertise and customer relationships.</p> <p>You’ll serve as a technical resource for both customers and internal teams, bridging support and specialized engineering functions in high-impact situations. Support is provided 24/7, so scheduled weekday and weekend shifts, on-call rotations, as well as some holiday and evening availability, will be a requirement. Our customers are global and rely on our team to provide expedient support at any time of day.</p> <p><strong>About You</strong></p> <ul> <li>You are a technical problem-solver who thrives on helping customers. You may have a background in WordPress development, technical support, or agency work, and you’re ready to take on more complex challenges while continuing to build your engineering skills. You enjoy the variety of working with a wide spectrum of interesting global customers.</li> <li>You never stop learning. You have a willingness to rapidly learn new technologies and deepen your expertise in areas like PHP, JavaScript, and the WordPress ecosystem. You’re excited by the challenge of debugging unfamiliar applications and expanding your technical toolkit.</li> <li>You are curious and love to dig deeper. When an issue is escalated to you, you’re not satisfied with surface-level fixes. You’re driven to understand the root cause and to document what you learn, so the team can benefit from your investigation.</li> <li><a href="">Communication is our oxygen</a> and the basis of everything we do. You have excellent written English and can communicate technical concepts to customers and colleagues, even when things go wrong. You know how to translate complex debugging findings into clear, actionable guidance. You like actively solving problems, and helping others solve them too. You enjoy collaborative troubleshooting, whether that’s pairing with a Support Engineer on a tricky ticket, or consulting with a CSE on a deeper platform issue. Customer support, and what you learn solving customer problems, drive you.</li> <li>You are passionate about customer success and team growth. You love working directly with customers and find satisfaction in mentoring teammates. Experience in a technical support environment—especially enterprise WordPress support—is highly valued.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Technical Requirements</strong></p> <ul> <li><strong>WordPress expertise with a solid understanding of core concepts,</strong> including themes, plugins, hooks and filters, WP-CLI, imports, and common troubleshooting patterns. Familiarity with the block editor (Gutenberg) and ecommerce solutions (WooCommerce) is a plus.</li> <li><strong>Proficient in reading and troubleshooting code in multiple languages</strong>, including HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript. You should be comfortable navigating unfamiliar codebases to identify issues and able to write small code snippets or patches when needed.</li> <li><strong>Understanding of web technologie</strong>s, including REST APIs, HTTP, DNS, domain management, and version control (primarily Git). Familiarity with reverse proxy configurations and caching layers is helpful but not required.</li> <li><strong>Familiarity with software engineering practices</strong>, including coding standards, source control workflows, and basic testing concepts. Experience working alongside engineering teams or contributing to team repositories is valued.</li> <li><strong>Solid understanding of performance and scalability concepts in WordPress environments</strong>, including common causes of slow queries, caching strategies, and resource optimization. Security awareness and familiarity with common vulnerabilities are welcome but not required.</li> <li><strong>Comfortable using monitoring and debugging tools </strong>such as New Relic, Kibana, or similar platforms to investigate application behavior, identify errors, and trace performance issues.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Requirements</strong></p> <ul> <li><strong>US-based position.</strong> Candidates must be based in the United States, undergo background checks as required, and hold American citizenship.</li> <li><strong>Self-motivated and collaborative work ethic.</strong> Self-starters who love taking initiative and seeing things through to completion do well on our teams. </li> <li><strong>Strong troubleshooting abilities.</strong> You can take complex problems and break them down systematically, identifying root causes through methodical investigation. You know how to gather the right information, isolate variables, and work toward resolution—or clearly document your findings when escalating.</li> <li><strong>Experience in customer-facing technical roles. </strong>You’ve worked directly with customers in a support, agency, or consulting environment, and understand how to balance technical accuracy with clear, empathetic communication. Experience in enterprise WordPress support or a similar environment where customers expect fast, personal responses is an advantage.</li> </ul> <p><strong>What to Expect</strong></p> <p>Your day-to-day work will include:</p> <ul> <li>Providing high-quality technical support and consultation through Zendesk tickets and customer calls.</li> <li>Handling escalated customer issues that require deeper investigation, including urgent tickets and complex debugging scenarios.</li> <li>In-depth debugging that requires close examination of logs, analysis of customer codebases, and collaboration with engineering teams.</li> <li>Providing technical guidance to customers on WordPress best practices, performance optimization, and common implementation patterns.</li> <li>Building and updating internal and customer-facing documentation.</li> <li>Contributing to the continuous improvement of our platform, processes, and customer experience.</li> </ul> <p>Support is provided 24/7, so scheduled weekday and weekend shifts, as well as some holiday and evening availability, will be a requirement. There will be on-call rotations involving work with government contracts.</p> <p><strong>Salary range:</strong> $55,000 to $85,000 USD – Please note that salary ranges are global, regardless of location, and we pay in local currency.</p> <p>We are searching for high-caliber candidates with the skills and qualities to have a net positive for Automattic. Pay will reflect the potential contribution and the impact you can bring, which may, in some cases, go beyond the range stated.</p> <p>We’re pleased to offer a straightforward, competitive base salary, providing financial clarity without complex variable components. This isn’t your typical work-from-home job: we are a fully-remote company with an open vacation policy. To see a full list of benefits by country, consult our <a href="">Benefits Page</a>. And check out these links to learn more about <a href="">How We Hire</a> and <a href="">What We Expect from Ourselves</a>. </p>

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Common Interview Questions And Answers

1. HOW DO YOU PLAN YOUR DAY?

This is what this question poses: When do you focus and start working seriously? What are the hours you work optimally? Are you a night owl? A morning bird? Remote teams can be made up of people working on different shifts and around the world, so you won't necessarily be stuck in the 9-5 schedule if it's not for you...

2. HOW DO YOU USE THE DIFFERENT COMMUNICATION TOOLS IN DIFFERENT SITUATIONS?

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4. WHAT DO YOU NEED IN YOUR PHYSICAL WORKSPACE TO SUCCEED IN YOUR WORK?

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Or you may receive even more specific questions, such as: What's on your calendar? Do you plan blocks of time to do certain types of work? Do you have an open calendar that everyone can see?...

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Just like your schedule, how you track files and other information is very important. After all, everything is digital!...

8. HOW TO PRIORITIZE WORK?

The day I watched Marie Forleo's film separating the important from the urgent, my life changed. Not all remote jobs start fast, but most of them are...

9. HOW DO YOU PREPARE FOR A MEETING AND PREPARE A MEETING? WHAT DO YOU SEE HAPPENING DURING THE MEETING?

Just as communication is essential when working remotely, so is organization. Because you won't have those opportunities in the elevator or a casual conversation in the lunchroom, you should take advantage of the little time you have in a video or phone conference...

10. HOW DO YOU USE TECHNOLOGY ON A DAILY BASIS, IN YOUR WORK AND FOR YOUR PLEASURE?

This is a great question because it shows your comfort level with technology, which is very important for a remote worker because you will be working with technology over time...