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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Website Technician

💰 $ - $

ITWeb DevelopmentTechnical SupportDigital MarketingE-commerce

🎯 Role Definition

The Website Technician is responsible for the day-to-day technical care of public-facing websites and web applications. This role combines hands-on site maintenance, troubleshooting, code and content deployment, security patching, performance optimization, and user-support activities. You will work closely with developers, product owners, content editors, and marketing to ensure websites are performant, secure, accessible, and aligned with SEO best practices. The ideal Website Technician has a strong grounding in CMS platforms (e.g., WordPress, Drupal), hosting environments, front-end technologies, and web operations.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Web Intern or Web Production Assistant
  • IT Support Technician or Helpdesk Technician
  • Junior Front-End Developer

Advancement To:

  • Senior Website Technician / Web Operations Engineer
  • Web Developer (Front-end or Full-stack)
  • DevOps Engineer / Site Reliability Engineer
  • Technical Lead / Web Manager

Lateral Moves:

  • UX / Front-End Developer
  • SEO Specialist
  • Content Manager or Digital Marketing Specialist

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Maintain, update, and troubleshoot CMS-based websites (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla or equivalent), including installing, configuring, and updating themes, plugins, and modules while ensuring compatibility and minimizing downtime.
  • Diagnose and resolve front-end issues across browsers and devices; implement responsive CSS/HTML/JavaScript fixes to maintain consistent appearance and functionality on desktop, tablet, and mobile.
  • Implement and manage version control workflows (Git), coordinate deployments, create release notes, and conduct rollbacks when necessary to ensure safe and auditable changes.
  • Monitor website availability and performance using uptime and monitoring tools; investigate outages, identify root causes, and coordinate rapid incident response with engineering and hosting providers.
  • Perform regular security maintenance: apply OS, platform, and CMS patches, manage user access and permissions, rotate credentials, and execute malware scans and remediation.
  • Configure and maintain hosting infrastructure components (Linux servers, Apache/Nginx, PHP, MySQL/Postgres), including resource tuning, log review, and routine server hardening.
  • Set up and manage staging and production environments, including content syncs, database migrations, and safe deployment pipelines to prevent data loss and ensure continuity.
  • Optimize website speed and performance through image optimization, code minification, caching strategies (server-side, CDN, cache-control headers), and database indexing.
  • Configure and manage CDN services (Cloudflare, Fastly, Akamai), DNS records, HTTP headers, and SSL/TLS certificates to improve global delivery and secure connections.
  • Troubleshoot and resolve e-commerce issues (shopping cart, payment gateway integrations, order processing) and coordinate with third-party vendors and payment providers when needed.
  • Implement and validate SEO technical requirements: semantic markup, structured data, canonical tags, redirects (301/302), sitemap generation, and robots.txt management to improve crawlability and search visibility.
  • Ensure site accessibility and compliance with WCAG guidelines by testing, remediating issues, and documenting fixes to meet legal and inclusive design standards.
  • Integrate and maintain analytics and tracking systems (Google Analytics, GA4, Tag Manager, conversion pixels) and validate tracking accuracy for marketing and product analytics.
  • Manage backups and disaster recovery processes: schedule automated backups, test restores, and document recovery procedures to minimize data loss risk.
  • Perform routine database maintenance and optimization, backups, and query tuning to maintain healthy site performance for high-traffic pages.
  • Build and maintain automated scripts (Bash, Python, Node.js) for deployments, monitoring, or routine maintenance to improve operational efficiency and repeatability.
  • Review third-party scripts and plugins for performance and security impact; propose and implement alternatives or mitigation strategies where necessary.
  • Conduct QA, smoke tests, and cross-functional user acceptance testing (UAT) for updates and feature releases to ensure stability and quality before public launch.
  • Maintain detailed technical documentation, runbooks, and knowledge base articles for common tasks, incident responses, and onboarding of new team members.
  • Respond to internal support tickets and client requests, triage issues, set priority with stakeholders, and communicate resolution timelines in a customer-service oriented manner.
  • Implement automated accessibility and SEO audits and follow through on remediation items to reduce technical debt and improve site health scores.
  • Coordinate with marketing and content teams to publish time-sensitive campaigns, ensure tracking and redirects are configured correctly, and provide technical support during launches.
  • Manage DNS configurations, email deliverability settings, SPF/DKIM/DMARC records, and domain renewals to maintain uninterrupted web and email services.
  • Participate in on-call rotation to provide after-hours support for critical site incidents and ensure timely resolution and post-incident reporting.
  • Evaluate, recommend, and implement third-party integrations (APIs, headless CMS connectors, payment gateways) and work with engineers to validate integrations and security.
  • Lead small migrations or upgrades (e.g., PHP version updates, CMS major version upgrades) planning rollbacks, testing compatibility, and communicating maintenance windows.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc content publishing requests, minor template edits, and editorial training for content editors to empower non-technical staff.
  • Contribute to the website roadmap by identifying technical debt, proposing improvements, and estimating effort for planned features and infrastructure changes.
  • Collaborate with product managers, designers, and marketers during sprint planning and agile ceremonies to translate business needs into technical tasks and acceptance criteria.
  • Assist with procurement and evaluation of hosting, CDN, security, and analytics vendors and maintain vendor relationships to ensure SLA compliance.
  • Produce periodic website health reports, performance metrics, and SEO/analytics summaries to inform stakeholders and guide optimization efforts.
  • Train and onboard new team members on deployment workflows, monitoring tools, and incident response procedures to maintain operational readiness.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Strong practical experience with CMS platforms such as WordPress and Drupal: plugin/module management, templating, and migration best practices.
  • Proficient in HTML5, CSS3 (including responsive techniques), and JavaScript (ES6+); ability to debug and patch front-end issues.
  • Experience with server-side languages and environments such as PHP, Node.js, or similar and understanding of LAMP/LEMP stacks.
  • Proficiency with relational databases (MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL): writing, optimizing, and troubleshooting SQL queries and migrations.
  • Familiarity with Git-based workflows for version control and CI/CD tools (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins) for automated deployments.
  • Experience administering Linux servers, web servers (Nginx, Apache), process managers (systemd, PHP-FPM), and basic shell scripting (Bash).
  • Hands-on knowledge of web performance optimization techniques: caching layers, image optimization, code minification, and performance profiling tools.
  • Experience configuring and managing CDNs (Cloudflare, Fastly) and DNS providers; ability to tune caching rules and HTTP headers.
  • Practical knowledge of website security best practices: SSL/TLS, OWASP top 10 awareness, vulnerability scanning, and remediation workflows.
  • Experience with analytics and tracking platforms (Google Analytics / GA4, Google Tag Manager) and validating event tracking and conversion funnels.
  • Familiarity with accessibility standards (WCAG 2.x) and tools for accessibility testing and remediation.
  • Experience with e-commerce platforms and integrations (WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento) and payment gateway troubleshooting.
  • Experience with automated backups, monitoring tools (New Relic, Datadog, UptimeRobot), and log aggregation for proactive issue detection.
  • Ability to work with RESTful APIs and integrate external services, including API authentication and error handling.
  • Experience with containerization (Docker) and basic orchestration concepts is a plus.

Soft Skills

  • Clear, proactive communicator able to translate technical issues into business-impact language for stakeholders.
  • Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving skills with a methodical, analytical approach to incident investigation.
  • Customer-service orientation: patient, responsive, and accountable when supporting internal or external users.
  • Time management and prioritization: able to manage multiple tickets, deployments, and scheduled maintenance windows.
  • Team player: collaborate effectively across design, engineering, marketing, and operations teams.
  • Attention to detail: meticulous when editing content, applying patches, and validating cross-platform compatibility.
  • Documentation mindset: committed to creating and updating runbooks, standard operating procedures, and knowledge base articles.
  • Adaptability: comfortable learning new platforms, integrations, and tools in a fast-paced digital environment.
  • Initiative: identifies technical debt, proposes improvements, and drives continuous optimization.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • High school diploma or equivalent with relevant technical certifications (e.g., CompTIA, Google IT, WordPress certifications).

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Web Development, or related field.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Technology
  • Web Development / Front-End Engineering
  • Digital Media / Interactive Design

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 1–5 years of professional experience maintaining and supporting websites or web applications.

Preferred:

  • 3+ years working directly with CMS platforms, web hosting environments, and website operations in a production environment.
  • Demonstrated track record of performance optimizations, security patching, and executing successful site migrations or upgrades.
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