Senior WordPress Full-Stack Developer — Improve Existing Freelancer Marketplace

Project We are building TalentHub.sg, an Equinet ecosystem platform where digital talent can build assessed profiles and portfolios, complete aptitude/career assessments, earn badges, discover jobs/contracts/freelance gigs, apply with their profile, and communicate with employers. Employers can post opportunities, review applicants and request curated shortlists. Important This is not a greenfield design exercise and not a Supabase rebuild. We have a new static TalentHub prototype that defines the intended UI/product direction, plus existing WordPress/GigHub marketplace work that may contain reusable mechanics. Your first responsibility is to audit before rebuilding. Budget and timeline • Target fixed-price budget: S$2,000-S$3,000. • Target delivery: 2 weeks. • Prefer one senior, accountable developer who can work across PHP, WordPress, database, REST/AJAX, JavaScript/CSS and security. • Please do not apply if your default recommendation is to rebuild everything in another stack without first auditing what already works. What the MVP needs • Talent and employer accounts with correct role/capability boundaries. • Talent profiles, skills, portfolio/evidence, availability and privacy controls. • Employer organisations, verification state and opportunity posting. • Jobs, contracts, freelance gigs/projects and other configurable opportunity types. • Applications/proposals with screening answers, selected portfolio evidence, status management and one-active-proposal rules. • Three assessment journeys from the supplied prototype: Career Readiness Check, timed Live Aptitude Check, and timed Career Track Assessment. • Versioned assessment results, score breakdowns and assessed badges. • Badge wall / evidence ladder and foundation for public Verified Talent credential verification. • Simple secure marketplace messaging/inbox between permitted parties. • Employer applicant review and curated-shortlist support. • Responsive, polished UI based on the supplied TalentHub prototype. • Admin moderation and basic operational controls. Technical expectations • Strong WordPress/PHP engineering beyond Elementor/page-builder work. • Custom roles/capabilities and object-level authorisation. • REST/AJAX security, nonces/CSRF, sanitisation, contextual escaping and data minimisation. • Good judgement on CPT/meta/taxonomies versus indexed custom tables. • Concurrency-safe proposal and assessment submission handling. • Secure WordPress-native file uploads. • Assessment timer and scoring integrity; do not rely solely on client-side JavaScript for authoritative rules. • Plugin-safe customisation using hooks/filters, child-theme overrides and/or a small companion plugin. • Git workflow, staging, backup/restore and rollback discipline. • Ability to document data so we can migrate to Supabase/Postgres later without building Supabase now. Future migration readiness At handover, we expect a data dictionary, inventory of CPTs/taxonomies/meta/custom tables, role/capability map, plugin dependencies, REST/export notes and sample machine-readable exports for core entities. Critical marketplace data must not be buried only in page-builder configuration or undocumented serialized blobs. Not in this phase • Native iOS/Android app • Full Supabase rebuild • AI matching engine • Escrow/payments • Real-time chat/video • Large-scale crawling/content automation • Complex external SkillsFuture API integration How to apply - answer all 12 1. After reviewing the supplied prototype, what would you reuse from an existing WordPress marketplace and what would you rebuild? What information do you need before deciding? 2. How would you model assessment definitions, versions, attempts, responses, scores and badges so historical results never change when questions are updated? 3. How would you enforce a 25-minute one-attempt assessment if a user refreshes, changes their browser clock, opens two tabs or submits twice? 4. How would you prevent correct answers/scoring logic from being trivially extracted before an assessment is submitted? 5. How would you stop Employer B from changing an ID and reading Employer A's applicants or messages? 6. How would you guarantee one active proposal per talent/opportunity under concurrent requests? 7. Which TalentHub records would you keep in CPT/meta/taxonomies, and which would you put in custom tables? Why? 8. How would you implement portfolio/evidence uploads securely using WordPress APIs? 9. How would you extend a marketplace plugin safely without losing customisations on update? 10. What exactly would you deliver so a future Supabase/Postgres migration is straightforward? 11. With S$2,000-S$3,000 and four weeks, give your proposed milestone/hour allocation and what you would defer to Phase 2. 12. Provide one relevant WordPress application you personally built, your exact role, one real technical problem you solved, and a small code sample you are authorised to share. Selection process Shortlisted candidates may be invited to a paid practical WordPress assessment using synthetic TalentHub data. We value AI-assisted productivity, but you must understand, defend and take responsibility for the architecture, security and code you submit. What a strong proposal looks like Specific, economical and technically grounded. We are not looking for the longest proposal. We are looking for someone who can identify what already works, protect the budget, implement the new assessment-led features securely, and tell us when a feature should be deferred rather than over-engineered.