Lead Web Platform Engineer

The Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) is a 150-year-old conservation nonprofit focused on outdoor recreation from Maine to Virginia. With over 30 lodges, huts, and volunteer camps & cabins, we believe that by getting people outdoors, we unlock and deepen our community’s commitment to conservation. We partner with local communities, outdoor brands, and government entities to expand our community’s impact. 

This is an important moment at The Appalachian Mountain Club. We are on a journey to transform and scale our technology to better meet the needs of our members, volunteers, guests, and staff. Having modern, versatile, easy-to-use technology is critical to our mission to get more people outdoors.  

Our website is the primary digital gateway to our organization - serving members, donors, volunteers, guests, and the broader public. It is deeply integrated with Salesforce, retail systems, booking platforms, and analytics infrastructure. AMC is investing in the next generation of its digital experience. This role will help stabilize and optimize our current WordPress environment while shaping a future-state architecture that delivers a more seamless experience to all of our constituents. If you are excited by the opportunity to modernize a mission-driven digital ecosystem and help define the roadmap from legacy CMS to headless architecture, this is a chance to make a visible, lasting impact. 

AMC seeks a collaborative Lead Web Platform Engineer to own the evolution of our current website platform while designing  our future-state architecture. 

This role is for someone who is both hands-on and forward-looking. Someone who can operate today’s platform with rigor and discipline while proactively building the foundation for what comes next. 

We’re seeking a hands-on Lead Web Platform Engineer to own the evolution of our website platform. You will also manage day-to-day operations, security, and performance. Our current site uses a number of plugins and Gravity Forms to collect donations and manage membership renewals/activations, integrated with Click & Pledge and Salesforce for donation and membership data. You’ll partner closely with our Salesforce, Data, and Marketing teams to ensure reliable, secure, and measurable digital experiences for donors, members, volunteers, and staff. 

While this is a remote role location is flexible only within the AMC's footprint.

What You'll Be Doing at AMC

What Makes this Role Unique 

• You will shape the future of a high-visibility digital platform 

• You will influence how our mission is experienced online 

• You will design the path from legacy CMS to a modern architecture 

• You will work within a broader enterprise transformation effort 

Stabilize and Elevate the Current Wordpress Environment 

• Administer and optimize our WordPress platform 

• Mature hosting architecture within AWS 

• Oversee plugin lifecycle, versioning, and governance 

• Improve performance (caching, CDN optimization) 

• Strengthen security posture and access controls 

• Improve CI/CD and environment promotion processes 

• Ensure integration reliability (Salesforce, Shopify, booking systems) 

Architect the Next Generation Platform 

• Create a more unified digital experience 

• Design and document a headless CMS future state 

• Lead technical evaluations of CMS replacement options 

• Define content modeling and structured metadata strategy 

• Establish standards for APIs, content delivery, and omnichannel readiness 

• Partner with Marketing to modernize publishing workflows 

• Create phased migration roadmap and technical proofs of concept 

Establish Platform Governance 

• Define publishing and deployment standards 

• Formalize performance SLAs and monitoring practices 

• Create documentation and architecture diagrams 

• Improve taxonomy and structured content governance 

• Align website evolution with enterprise data strategy 

Be a Strategic Technical Partner 

• Translate business needs into digital architecture decisions 

• Proactively identify modernization opportunities 

• Contribute to multi-year digital roadmap planning 

• Provide thoughtful platform recommendations grounded in scalability and sustainability 

What AMC is Looking For 

• A systems thinker who sees architecture, not just pages 

• A strategic technologist who understands that the website is a critical integration layer across all of our platforms 

• Comfortable owning the platform end-to-end 

• Equally strong in execution and design 

• Self-directed and proactive 

• Comfortable collaborating across multiple stakeholder teams 

• Motivated by building something durable and modern 

Minimum Qualifications 

• 3-5 Experience owning/administering a CMS/web platform in production 

• Strong WordPress experience required 

• Experience with administering payment gateways and webhook/API integrations 

• Hands-on AWS experience for PHP/WordPress workloads 

• Proven experience maintaining data integrations with a variety of platforms. Salesforce experience preferred 

• Strong grounding in web security, least-privilege/IAM, secrets management, and PII/compliance considerations 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Nonprofit domain experience (donations, memberships, recurring gifts, acknowledgments) 

• Gravity Forms experience 

• Headless CMS experience 

• Experience integrating CMS with Salesforce or other CRM platforms 

• Experience with structured data, schema, and AI-ready content modeling 

• Familiarity with security reviews and penetration testing coordination 

What AMC Can Offer You  

Salary: $77,214 - $104,244

We are committed to fair compensation practices, and we encourage qualified candidates to apply. The initial salary represents our starting point, and our compensation philosophy is designed to reward and recognize the contributions of our employees as they grow within the organization. External candidates typically begin their journey with us at the starting point of the salary range. The final compensation offer will be based on factors such as experience, education, skills and geographic differential relevant to the position, and will be discussed during the interview process.  

Benefits  

• Health Plan: Generous employer contributions through Cigna with optional vision and dental.  

• Other Insurance: 100% employer paid life insurance, AD&D insurance, long-term disability.  

• Career Progression: The potential to have annual compensation reviews commensurate with performance and effort.  

• Retirement: Mandatory 403(b) with 4% matching employer contributions and a vesting schedule.  

• Paid Time Off: up to 4 weeks of paid earned time and up to 11 paid company holidays.  

• Other Team Member Perks:  

• 30% discount on AMC Merchandise  

• Free Annual AMC Membership  

• 10 Free nights at AMC locations  

• Educational Assistance  

• Prodeals discounts on equipment & gear and more!  

To Apply:  

Please include a resume and cover letter. No phone calls or agencies please.  

AMC encourages all interested candidates to apply, even if they do not meet every listed qualification. If you have a passion for the outdoors and believe your skills and experiences align with this role, we welcome your application.  

The Appalachian Mountain Club has zero tolerance for child abuse or placing children in danger. The AMC requires all employees who work in a program or facility which serves children, disabled persons, or the elderly to have a criminal background record check performed on their name annually with employment contingent upon satisfactory results.