What to Look for When Hiring a Craft CMS Developer

Posted by: Karl Bowers | April 01 2026

Craft CMS has a strong but relatively specialised developer community. The difference between someone who has built seriously with Craft and someone who has touched it once or twice is meaningful. If your site runs on Craft and you need ongoing development or support, knowing what to look for can save you a considerable amount of time and money.

Portfolio and recent Craft work

The most straightforward indicator is whether the developer has recent, relevant Craft CMS work they can point to. Not just sites that were built on Craft three years ago, but active projects on current versions of the platform. Craft has changed substantially across major versions, and experience on Craft 2 or 3 doesn’t automatically transfer to working with Craft 4 or 5.

Ask specifically which version of Craft they’ve been working with most recently, and whether they’ve handled any major version upgrades.

Understanding of the Craft ecosystem

Craft has its own ecosystem of plugins, its own approach to content modelling, and its own Twig-based templating system. A developer who knows Craft well should be able to talk fluently about the plugins they rely on, how they approach section and entry type structures, and how they handle common challenges like image transforms, Matrix fields, and custom field layouts.

If someone claims Craft expertise but can’t name the plugins they typically use, can’t explain how the element query system works, or hasn’t heard of SEOmatic or Sprig, that’s a red flag.

Familiarity with the full stack

Craft sites don’t exist in isolation. They depend on a server environment, a PHP version, a Composer workflow, and in most cases a set of third-party integrations. A developer who only thinks about the Craft layer and leaves the server and hosting to someone else will struggle with the kind of problems that actually affect business-critical sites.

Look for someone who understands PHP version requirements, can assess hosting environments, and has experience managing Craft deployments rather than just building them locally.

Composer and version control fluency

Modern Craft development is Composer-based. Craft itself, its plugins, and its dependencies are all managed through Composer. A developer who isn’t comfortable with Composer, or who manages plugins by manually uploading files, is going to create problems for whoever maintains the site next.

Similarly, all Craft development should happen in version control. If a developer can’t give you a clear answer about their Git workflow, that’s worth probing.

Communication and documentation habits

Technical skill matters, but so does the developer’s ability to explain what they’re doing and why. A Craft site that’s well-built but undocumented is a liability the moment that developer is no longer involved. Ask how they handle documentation, what their handover process looks like, and whether they can explain technical decisions in plain language.

Posted by: Karl Bowers
Posted in: Craft CMS
Post Date: April 01 2026 View all latest posts