Senior OpenCart Developer (Long-Term) — Established E-commerce Store ($20–50/hr)

We are looking for a long-term developer who will become a key member of our development team. Our existing developer will continue to be involved, we are expanding our development capacity to support the long-term growth of the business. Paid trial task first. We are looking for a developer who will work directly with us. Agencies and subcontracting arrangements are not a good fit for this role. This role is not for general PHP developers. It requires substantial hands-on experience with OpenCart 3.x and Journal 3, candidates whose background is primarily in other PHP frameworks are unlikely to be a good fit. The stack - OpenCart 3.0.x, Journal 3 - PHP 8.x, MySQL - Production store with custom modules, third-party extensions and a custom SEO layer Typical work - Bug fixing and production troubleshooting - OpenCart / Journal customizations and custom modules - Template and CSS work - Performance optimization - Technical SEO (structured data, feeds, sitemaps) - Extension compatibility, database maintenance - Safe deployment to staging, then production IMPORTANT We are looking to improve and extend an existing production store. We are NOT looking to rewrite or migrate the project. Proposals focused primarily on rebuilding the store from scratch are unlikely to be a good fit. Requirements - You are comfortable reading and understanding an existing codebase before introducing changes. We value developers who first understand the system, then improve it — rather than rewriting working functionality. - Demonstrable OpenCart 3.x experience on live stores - Real working knowledge of Journal 3 - OCMOD / vQmod, strong PHP + MySQL + JS - Works in a staging environment. Never edits core files directly. Always creates a backup before significant changes. - Excellent written English. Most of our communication will be asynchronous and in writing. - Small tasks turned around in 24–48h where possible ENGAGEMENT - Hourly, with a weekly cap agreed in advance. - NDA signed before any access is granted. - All trial tasks are completed on a staging environment. No production access will be provided during the trial. - Day-to-day communication in writing via Upwork. AVAILABILITY Availability is very important for this role. - Please tell us your current workload and how many hours per week you can realistically commit. - We expect new messages to be acknowledged within one business day whenever possible. To apply, answer these in your proposal: 1. Start your proposal with the word "SPRING". 2. Describe an OpenCart 3.x bug that took you more than a day to solve. What was the actual root cause? 3. Tell us about a time you inherited someone else's code that you thought was badly written. What did you do? Also include: years of hands-on OpenCart work and roughly how many live stores, your timezone and normal working hours, and your hourly rate. Descriptions of past work are fine, we understand most client sites can't be linked publicly. Applications that don't answer questions 2 and 3 will not be reviewed.