About the Role
Candlelight Foundation for Children with Special Needs, a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering children diagnosed with Autism, Dyslexia, and ADHD, is seeking a talented Full Stack Web Developer to join its engineering team. This is a hands-on role for a self-driven developer who takes ownership of their work and has a proven track record of shipping real products to production, contributing to a live, consumer-facing social community platform built primarily with Next.js.
Key Responsibilities- Build and maintain performant, responsive UI components using Next.js and React.
- Implement and manage rendering strategies (SSR, SSG, ISR) appropriate to each feature.
- Ensure consistent, accessible, and high-quality user experiences across devices.
- Optimise for Core Web Vitals and real-world performance metrics.
- Develop and maintain RESTful or GraphQL APIs to support frontend features.
- Integrate with databases such as MongoDB or PostgreSQL and third-party services.
- Handle authentication, session management, and secure user data practices.
- Manage environment variables, secrets, and configuration across environments.
- Deploy and maintain applications on VPS environments (Hostinger, DigitalOcean, AWS) or modern cloud platforms.
- Configure and manage Nginx, PM2, and Docker as part of deployment workflows.
- Support staging and production environment management.
- Participate in code reviews and maintain deployment best practices.
- Collaborate closely with design and product teams to translate requirements into working features.
- Identify and communicate technical risks early and proactively.
- Produce clean, maintainable code and contribute to technical documentation.
- 2+ years of professional experience in web development with live, production-facing applications.
- Strong, demonstrable experience with Next.js (non-negotiable).
- Proficiency in React.js and modern JavaScript/TypeScript.
- Solid understanding of CSS, responsive design, and component architecture.
- Backend development experience, Node.js preferred.
- Database experience with MongoDB or a relational alternative.
- Experience deploying to and managing VPS or cloud hosting environments.
- Familiarity with Nginx, PM2, and Docker in a production context.
- Proficient in Git-based workflows and collaborative development practices.
- Ability to work independently and deliver features end-to-end with minimal supervision.
- Nice to have: experience building social, community, or marketplace platforms.
- Nice to have: familiarity with real-time features (WebSockets, SSE, push notifications).
- Nice to have: experience with Firebase (Auth, Storage, or Firestore).
- Nice to have: knowledge of Next.js-specific performance optimisation techniques.
- Nice to have: experience with CI/CD pipelines and automated deployment workflows.
- Nice to have: exposure to monitoring and error tracking tools such as Sentry or UptimeRobot.
- Opportunity to contribute to a meaningful cause supporting children with special needs.
- Autonomous, ownership-driven work environment.
- Exposure to full stack development on a live, growing platform.
- Collaborative team culture with direct impact on product direction.