As someone who regularly hires WordPress developers, I can confirm that good developers are in demand.
Note that I’ve said good developers.
WordPress Developers ARE In Demand
WordPress currently powers 30% of the web – which equates to tens of millions of websites (roughly speaking).
This includes a massive portion of small business websites and blogs combined with a decent chunk of enterprise portals, SaaS solutions, eCommerce stores running WooCommerce, LMS platforms, large and complex magazines and much more.
This has led to a number of roles within the WordPress ecosystem such as:
- WordPress plugin developer
- WordPress theme developer
- WordPress performance engineer
- WordPress extension developer for plugin X
- WordPress framework engineer
- WordPress security expert
- WordPress migrations specialist
Sure, most of those roles are not advertised this way for marketing purposes. Clients tend to look for “WordPress developer” which leads to some ambiguity whenever you attempt to find someone appropriate for the job.
WordPress Developers are Web Developers
A professional developer using WordPress can easily specialize in other tangible areas.
You may get discouraged after browsing Upwork or even your LinkedIn network, discovering a large volume of WordPress developers.
But the majority of them merely do provide “site building services” or generic maintenance. Many of them are able to find freelance gigs every now and then, or they work as WordPress folks in marketing/creative studios.
The market needs more professional PHP and JavaScript developers capable of solving complex problems for the platform.
As long as you are proficient in PHP and familiar with WordPress’s life cycle and its numerous APIs, you should be able to find all sorts of job opportunities as a WordPress developer.