Lead Web Engineer

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Regular Employee Washington, DC, US

3 days ago Requisition

Salary Range: $ To $ Annually

ABOUT ULI The Urban Land Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit research and education organization supported by its members. Founded in 1936, the Institute has more than 48,000 members worldwide representing the full spectrum of land use and real estate development disciplines across private enterprise and public service. ULI's mission is to shape the future of the built environment for transformative impact in communities worldwide.

ABOUT THE TEAM ULI's Data & Digital Products team builds the data, apps, and web platforms that ULI members and staff use every day. It is a small, engineering-led team organized around three areas: data, applications, and web. This role leads the web side.

THE ROLE ULI's web presence has grown to more than 100 sites, mostly on Word Press and hosted in Azure. Over the years it has become a tangle of microsites with inconsistent look and feel, dated navigation, and no shared design system, and the member experience has not kept pace. ULI is now rebuilding its web portfolio in phases, with the goal of bringing uli.org

and its many connected sites together into a single, modern platform. The Lead Web Engineer is the hands-on engineer at the center of that work. During the rebuild, expect to spend the large majority of your time, around 85 to 90 percent, writing code, building prototypes, and shipping. You won't be chasing stakeholders for requirements. ULI's in-house project management team handles requirements gathering and stakeholder alignment.

They bring you the business objective, for example a dynamic homepage that serves members, non-members, and staff differently, and you decide how to deliver it: the technical approach, the architecture, the scope, and the timeline. Alongside the rebuild, you will own ULI's Azure web hosting and security layer, oversee the web services ticket queue with the support of one direct report, and become the primary developer on a growing set of digital products for members and staff.

Much of the day-to-day site maintenance that ULI currently sends to outside contractors will come in-house through this role. This role suits someone who enjoys taking a complicated system apart, working out how it really works, and putting it back together better. WHAT YOU WILL DO The uli.org rebuild

• Work out how uli.org and its connected sites function today, and lead the technical work to consolidate them into one site for members, non-members, and staff
• Turn business objectives from the project management team into technical solutions: recommend the approach, scope the work, estimate timelines, and design the architecture
• Build prototypes and present them to stakeholders to test ideas early
• Implement the information architecture and content models, and build the templates behind them
• Plan and run content migration, redirects, and search continuity so nothing is lost at launch
• Set up measurement for the new site, including GA4, Google Tag Manager, and Core Web Vitals targets
• Help ULI decide whether to move to a single CMS, including options such as Umbraco, and explain the trade-offs clearly
• Write, review, and maintain production code across ULI's web properties, including custom themes, templates, plugins, and integrations
• Build and maintain Word Press implementations, including the block editor, custom post types, taxonomies, and multisite
• Design and build REST APIs and integrations so web properties can read from and write back to ULI's databases and other systems, including netFORUM
• Build to WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standards as a default, not an afterthought
• Put version control, testing, code review, and documentation practices in place across ULI's web codebases

Azure hosting and security

• Own ULI's Azure web hosting, including App Services, storage, and networking
• Own the edge and security layer: CDN, WAF rules, bot and DDoS mitigation, DNS, and TLS certificates
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines, staging environments, and deployment workflows
• Monitor site health, set uptime and performance targets, and respond to incidents

Digital products

• Act as primary developer on digital products for members and staff, working from direction and scope set by your manager, with code review support
• Support the launch and hosting of new platforms, such as ULI's…