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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Web Operator

💰 $45,000 - $75,000

Web OperationsITDevOpsDigital Operations

🎯 Role Definition

The Web Operator is responsible for day-to-day website availability, content publishing, technical operations, and first-line incident response. This role sits at the intersection of content management, systems administration, and digital performance, ensuring web properties are secure, performant, accessible, and aligned with business requirements. A strong Web Operator blends practical technical skills (CMS, FTP/SFTP, DNS, CDN, basic scripting) with clear communication, process discipline, and customer-focused problem solving.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Junior Web Administrator or Web Content Editor transitioning from content-only roles into technical operations.
  • IT Support Technician / Helpdesk with exposure to web hosting, DNS, or server monitoring.
  • Digital Marketing Coordinator who has managed CMS publishing and analytics.

Advancement To:

  • Senior Web Operator / Lead Web Operations Engineer
  • Web Operations Manager / Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
  • DevOps Engineer or Platform Engineer focused on deployment pipeline automation
  • Digital Product Manager for web platforms

Lateral Moves:

  • Front-End Developer (HTML/CSS/JS focus)
  • QA / Test Automation Engineer with focus on web regression testing
  • Digital Analytics or SEO Specialist

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Monitor website uptime and performance across multiple environments (production, staging, QA), using tools like Datadog, New Relic, Pingdom or Grafana; detect anomalies, escalate incidents, and own first-response remediation until handoff to engineering.
  • Manage content publishing workflows in enterprise CMS platforms (e.g., WordPress, Drupal, Sitecore), including scheduling, content rollbacks, metadata updates, and ensuring editorial and technical governance is followed.
  • Execute daily deployment tasks and releases through established CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps), including pre-deploy checklists, smoke tests, and post-release validation to minimize user-facing risk.
  • Maintain and administer DNS records, SSL/TLS certificate renewals, CDN configuration (Cloudflare, Akamai, Fastly), and caching policies to ensure fast and secure content delivery globally.
  • Perform website and application health checks, log review, and root cause analysis using centralized logging and observability tools (ELK stack, Splunk), and document incidents in runbooks for future prevention.
  • Troubleshoot and resolve common web server issues (Apache, Nginx, IIS), application errors, permission problems, and file delivery issues while coordinating with backend engineering for platform-level fixes.
  • Manage file transfers, site migrations, and asset optimization via SFTP/FTP, rsync, or cloud storage (S3), ensuring integrity of media libraries and consistent URL mapping during moves or re-platforms.
  • Implement and maintain web accessibility checks and remediation tasks (WCAG), coordinating with content authors and front-end teams to ensure pages meet accessibility and legal compliance standards.
  • Support search engine optimization technical tasks, including sitemap updates, robots.txt management, structured data validation, canonicalization, and monitoring for crawl errors in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
  • Execute security maintenance tasks such as patching CMS plugins and modules, applying OS-level updates, scanning for vulnerabilities, and coordinating emergency patching for zero-day threats.
  • Administer user roles and permissions in CMS and hosting consoles, enforce least-privilege access, and audit changes to detect unauthorized edits or configuration drift.
  • Maintain backup and restore processes for web assets and databases, regularly testing recovery procedures and ensuring RTO/RPO objectives are met.
  • Monitor and respond to customer-facing issues reported via ticketing systems (Jira, ServiceNow), track incident SLA compliance, and communicate status to stakeholders and support teams.
  • Optimize front-end performance by auditing pages for render-blocking resources, image optimization, lazy loading, resource prefetching, and implementing performance budgets to improve Core Web Vitals.
  • Support A/B testing and feature flag rollouts by coordinating with Product/Experimentation teams, ensuring tests are implemented, tracked, and reverted cleanly when needed.
  • Configure and maintain integration points between web properties and third-party services (payments, CRM, marketing automation), troubleshoot API issues, and manage credentials securely.
  • Create and maintain runbooks, standard operating procedures, and deployment guides to reduce mean time to recovery (MTTR) and onboard new team members efficiently.
  • Coordinate with content, design, and product stakeholders to schedule maintenance windows, feature launches, and content migrations with minimal user disruption.
  • Conduct periodic performance and capacity planning activities, working with infrastructure teams to scale web infrastructure, provision instances, and optimize load balancing and autoscaling policies.
  • Maintain detailed change logs and post-incident reports; drive continuous improvement initiatives and preventative measures based on incident retrospectives and metric trends.
  • Implement and manage monitoring alerts with sensible thresholds to minimize alert fatigue while ensuring critical failures are acted upon promptly.
  • Validate cross-browser and cross-device compatibility for critical user flows, and escalate front-end issues to developers with clear reproduction steps and environment details.
  • Coordinate penetration test follow-ups and remediation tasks related to web application vulnerabilities, ensuring fixes are deployed and validated in production.
  • Assist with cost optimization for cloud-based hosting and CDN usage, identifying waste, rightsizing resources, and participating in budgeting conversations.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Provide training and documentation for content authors and internal stakeholders on publishing best practices and CMS features.
  • Participate in on-call rotations and provide timely weekend or after-hours support as needed for critical incidents.
  • Perform routine quality assurance checks on content changes, links, and forms to prevent regressions after deployments.
  • Assist marketing and SEO teams with tag management and analytics implementations.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Content Management Systems (CMS): deep operational experience with WordPress, Drupal, Sitecore or similar, including templating, plugin/module management, and content workflows.
  • Web servers and hosting: administration and troubleshooting of Nginx, Apache, IIS and familiarity with managed hosting platforms and cloud-hosted web instances (AWS, Azure, GCP).
  • Networking fundamentals: DNS, SSL/TLS, CDN configuration (Cloudflare, Akamai, Fastly), and HTTP caching headers for performance tuning.
  • Monitoring & observability: hands-on with Datadog, New Relic, Grafana, Prometheus, ELK/Splunk for uptime, logs, and metrics analysis.
  • Deployment & CI/CD: experience with Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps or similar tools for automated deployments and release orchestration.
  • Basic scripting & automation: shell scripting (Bash), Python, or PowerShell to automate routine tasks, backups, and monitoring checks.
  • Version control and Git workflows: branch management, pull requests, and basic merge conflict resolution.
  • Front-end knowledge: HTML5, CSS3, basic JavaScript — able to troubleshoot DOM, CSS and load-order issues and collaborate with front-end engineers.
  • Database fundamentals: basic MySQL, PostgreSQL or MSSQL operations for backups, restores, and simple queries related to content integrity.
  • Security operational skills: patch management, vulnerability scanning, web application firewall (WAF) configuration and incident response procedures.
  • Analytics & SEO tooling: Google Analytics / GA4, Google Search Console, tag managers (GTM), and A/B testing platforms (Optimizely, VWO).
  • Ticketing & communication tools: Jira, ServiceNow, Slack, Confluence for incident tracking and documentation.
  • File transfer & deployment protocols: FTP/SFTP, rsync, SCP and object storage (S3) experience.
  • Accessibility & compliance: knowledge of WCAG principles and tools for accessibility testing and remediation.

Soft Skills

  • Strong written and verbal communication for clear incident reports, cross-team updates, and vendor coordination.
  • Prioritization and time management under pressure during incidents and release windows.
  • Customer-focused mindset with attention to detail and a bias toward preventing user-facing issues.
  • Analytical problem solving and a methodical approach to reproducing and resolving defects.
  • Team collaboration and facilitation skills for coordinating between engineering, product, design, and marketing teams.
  • Adaptability to changing priorities, new tools, and evolving security or compliance requirements.
  • Documentation-oriented: ability to create clear runbooks, SOPs, and post-incident reviews.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • High school diploma or equivalent; relevant technical certifications or proven hands-on experience required.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Web Development, Digital Media, or related field.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Technology
  • Web Development / Web Design
  • Digital Media / Communications
  • Network Administration
  • Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 1–5 years of hands-on experience in website operations, systems administration, or CMS management.

Preferred:

  • 3+ years operating production web properties, experience in cloud hosting and CDNs, and involvement in incident management and CI/CD processes. Experience with enterprise CMS platforms and demonstrated ownership of web operations in a fast-paced environment preferred.
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