Senior OpenCart Developer (Long-Term) — Established E-commerce Store ($15–45/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 **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 - Communication is in writing (Upwork messages). We do not require video calls for day-to-day work. - NDA signed before any access is granted - First assignment: a small paid task, so we can evaluate code quality, communication, speed and reliability **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.