Director of Web Development

About TopDog Law

TopDog Law is revolutionizing legal marketing with a bold, outside-the-box approach. Founded in 2018 by James Helm, our firm has achieved 200-300% year-over-year growth, making us one of the fastest-growing legal brands in the country.

Ranked No. 149 on the Inc. 5000 list, TopDog Law is just getting started.

Job Overview:

TopDog Law is the fastest-growing personal injury brand in America, bold, digital-first, and data-driven. With a powerful social presence and a culture that blends creativity and analytics, we’re redefining what a modern law firm looks like. Now, we’re looking for a Director of Web Development to lead our next generation of websites and digital products, built for speed, scale, and performance.

You’ll own the technical direction, architecture, and execution of all TopDog Law and Lawsuits.com web properties. Your mission: deliver world-class site speed, SEO performance, and a best-in-class user experience, while maintaining the flexibility our marketing team needs to move fast.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You’ll architect, code, and eventually grow a small in-house or hybrid team (developers, QA, agency partners). You’ll modernize our WordPress + PHP foundation and lead the evolution toward a headless / hybrid architecture using Next.js or equivalent.

Responsibilities:

• Own architecture and delivery of all websites, microsites, and landing pages (WordPress, PHP, JavaScript frameworks).
• Lead performance optimization: Core Web Vitals, CDN, caching, image pipelines, code splitting, and SEO best practices.
• Maintain and extend the WordPress stack:
• • Custom theme and plugin development in PHP.
  • ACF, Gutenberg, and WordPress REST/GraphQL API integrations.
  • Security hardening, database optimization, version control.
• Plan and execute the headless migration:
• • WordPress (content layer) Next.js (frontend) on Vercel.
  • On-Demand ISR / Revalidation for instant publishing.
• Build interactive experiences:
• • Case-evaluation calculators (React + Edge Functions).
  • Online retainer signing (DocuSign / Dropbox Sign integrations).
• Integrate with marketing and data systems:
• • Salesforce, Ringba, Unbounce, BigQuery.
  • Track and route leads through API and webhook automation.
• Establish development standards:
• • Code reviews, CI/CD pipelines, staging environments, QA processes.
  • Documentation and version control via GitHub.
• Collaborate with Creative, SEO, and Decision Science teams to ship high-impact pages quickly without compromising performance.

Key Projects:

• Site pages consistently load under 2 seconds (LCP < 1.8s, CLS < 0.05).
• Publishing workflow: content live within 60 seconds of hitting “Publish.”
• Marketing team can launch pages without dev bottlenecks.
• Conversion-critical features (forms, calculators, signing) are fast, secure, and reliable.
• Codebase is modern, modular, and maintainable.

Qualifications:

• 7+ years in web development; 3+ years leading or managing dev teams.
• Deep expertise in WordPress and PHP, including custom plugin/theme work, REST APIs, performance tuning, and security.
• Strong proficiency in modern JavaScript (React/Next.js).
• Familiarity with headless CMS workflows (WordPress API, Sanity, Strapi, or similar).
• Experience deploying and optimizing sites on Vercel, AWS, or Cloudflare.
• Proven success improving Core Web Vitals and SEO outcomes.
• Strong understanding of CDNs, caching layers, build pipelines, and automated testing.
• Comfort working with marketing tech stacks (GTM, GA4, Salesforce, HubSpot, Unbounce, etc.).
• Ability to balance developer velocity with marketing agility.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with serverless functions (Vercel Edge, AWS Lambda).
• Knowledge of BigQuery, SQL, or Python for analytics integration.
• Experience in legal, medical, or performance marketing industries.
• Background in accessibility (WCAG) and ADA compliance for public-facing sites.