WordPress Developer Resume Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a mid-level developer at a digital agency who builds custom themes, plugins and WooCommerce stores. The name, employers and URLs are invented. If you are a fresher or have one or two years, there is a version for you further down.

The market is full of people who describe themselves as WordPress developers and have never written a hook. Four checks separate them.

• Do you write code or assemble plugins? Both are legitimate jobs, but they are different ones. If you build custom themes and plugins, say so in the first line. If you build with Elementor or Divi, say that instead and be good at it; pretending otherwise falls apart in the technical interview.
• Live URLs and a GitHub link. Three to six sites you can name, with what you did on each. A repository with real commits beats any adjective on the page.
• PHP level and modern WordPress. PHP 8, object-oriented code, Composer, and whether you have worked with the block editor rather than avoiding it. Block and full site editing experience is now a common screening question.
• Numbers that a client would care about: page speed and Core Web Vitals, order volume on a store you maintain, sites launched, migrations completed, uptime, tickets closed.

“Two candidates say "expert in WordPress". One shows a plugin on the repository and a site where they took the largest contentful paint under two seconds. The GitHub link is the resume; the rest is the cover letter.”

Three lines. Years, what you build, the stack, one number. The searches for this job cluster around experience levels, so here is one for each.

Group them so a technical reviewer can find the level fast. Fifteen to eighteen items is acceptable on a developer resume; padding beyond that is not.

WordPress and PHP:

• PHP 8.x, object-oriented PHP, Composer, PSR standards
• WordPress core APIs: actions and filters, WP_Query, options, transients, WP-Cron, REST API
• Custom theme development, the template hierarchy and child themes
• Block themes, theme.json, full site editing, and building custom blocks with React and the WordPress scripts toolchain
• Custom plugin development, with sanitization, escaping, nonces and prepared statements
• Custom post types, taxonomies, metaboxes; Advanced Custom Fields
• WooCommerce: hooks, template overrides, shipping and payment extensions, order flows
• Multisite, and headless WordPress with WPGraphQL if you have done it
• WP-CLI for migrations, search-replace, user and plugin management

Frontend and tooling:

• HTML5, CSS, Sass, Tailwind CSS, responsive layout
• JavaScript ES6, and jQuery (still present in a great deal of real WordPress work)
• React, at least to the level block development needs
• npm, Vite or webpack, and the build step your themes use
• Git and pull request workflow; GitHub Actions or similar for deploys
• Local development: LocalWP, DDEV or Docker
• Debugging: Query Monitor, Xdebug, WP_DEBUG, browser dev tools

Operations, performance and the commercial side:

• Managed hosting (WP Engine, Kinsta, Pantheon, Cloudways) and plain cPanel or VPS setups
• Core Web Vitals, caching layers, object cache with Redis, CDN and image optimization
• Security: hardening, update policy, malware cleanup, backup and restore testing
• MySQL basics and query optimization
• SEO plumbing: redirects, schema, Yoast or Rank Math, and not breaking URLs during a migration
• Accessibility to WCAG 2.1 AA
• Client communication, scoping and estimating, and writing documentation an editor can follow
• Page builders, named honestly: Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, Bricks. List them if you use them, but not instead of code skills.

For this job the projects section can carry as much weight as the experience section, and for freshers it carries more. Build it properly.

• Three to six projects, each with a live URL, one line on what it is, two lines on what you built, and the stack. Say explicitly which parts were yours.
• Include a number for each where you can: page speed before and after, orders a month, pages migrated, editors trained.
• GitHub matters more than a designed portfolio site. Pin three repositories with real commit history, a readme that explains the problem, and code someone can read.
• A plugin or theme on the WordPress.org repository is the strongest single item on a WordPress resume. Active install counts are public, so a small number is still real evidence.
• Contributions to WordPress core, a popular plugin, or translation work are worth a line. So are answers on the WordPress Stack Exchange or talks at a WordCamp.
• If your best work is under a non-disclosure agreement or was later redesigned, describe it without the URL and offer a code sample instead.
• Keep a code sample ready: one plugin file of 100 to 300 lines that shows how you structure, sanitize and comment. Agencies frequently ask for one instead of a take-home task.

This is the most searched version of this resume, and the good news is that WordPress is one of the easiest fields in which to build real evidence without a job. The bad news is that everyone else can too, so specificity is everything.

• Put projects above education and above any unrelated work. Five sites you built, with URLs, beat a degree in the reader's eyes.
• Build at least one thing that is not a page-builder site: a child theme with custom post types, or a small plugin that does one job well. It changes the category you are read in.
• Volunteer and low-cost work counts and should be written like a job: a nonprofit site, a friend's business, a college club. Give the same numbers you would give a client.
• Show that you understand security basics even at this level: sanitizing input, escaping output, using nonces. Mentioning them once tells a reviewer you have read real documentation.
• For one year of experience, quantify what you did handle: sites built, update cycles, migrations, tickets closed, bugs fixed. "9 sites, 30+ update cycles, 4 migrations" is a real year.
• Skip the objective. Write a summary that starts with what you have built, not what you hope to learn.
• Do not list every plugin you have ever installed. A list of 40 plugin names reads as inexperience, not range.

• One page up to about eight years. Two pages only if you have a long project list that a reader would actually want.
• Order for experienced developers: contact with GitHub and site, summary, experience, skills, projects, education. For freshers: contact, summary, projects, skills, experience, education.
• Plain single column, no photo, no skill bars. Percentage bars next to "PHP" tell a technical reviewer nothing and get stripped by applicant tracking systems anyway.
• Mirror the posting's wording where true: custom theme, custom plugin, hooks, WP_Query, Gutenberg or block editor, WooCommerce, ACF, PHP 8, REST API, multisite, WP-CLI, Core Web Vitals, headless, and the hosting platform by name.
• Spell out both forms of anything abbreviated once: "Advanced Custom Fields (ACF)", "WordPress command line interface (WP-CLI)". Parsers often match on only one.
• Send a PDF named Firstname-Lastname-WordPress-Developer-Resume.pdf. There is no reason to hand out a Word version unless a recruiter asks.
• In the UK, India and much of Europe the same document is called a CV and often runs longer, but for a US application keep it to one page, no photo and no date of birth.