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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Web Technician

💰 $ - $

ITWebSupport

🎯 Role Definition

A Web Technician is responsible for the day-to-day health, performance, security, and availability of public-facing and internal web properties. This role blends server and hosting administration with practical front-end troubleshooting, CMS management, deployment support, monitoring, and user-focused incident resolution. The Web Technician acts as the bridge between development, operations, and business teams — ensuring websites and web applications are secure, performant, accessible, and maintained according to SLAs.

Keywords: Web Technician, website maintenance, web server administration, CMS support, WordPress, Drupal, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, DNS, SSL, CDN, site reliability.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Junior Web Technician / Web Support Specialist
  • IT Support Technician with web responsibilities
  • Front-End Developer Intern or Web Operations Assistant

Advancement To:

  • Senior Web Technician / Web Systems Engineer
  • Web Administrator / Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
  • DevOps Engineer or Web Operations Lead

Lateral Moves:

  • Front-End Developer
  • Systems Administrator
  • Technical Support Engineer (Escalation/Level 2)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Install, configure, and maintain web servers (Apache, Nginx, IIS) and associated modules; manage virtual hosts, reverse proxies, and server tuning to maintain high availability and optimal performance for web properties.
  • Monitor website uptime, response times, and application health using monitoring platforms (e.g., New Relic, Datadog, Pingdom); respond to alerts, perform incident diagnosis, document root cause analysis, and implement preventive actions.
  • Troubleshoot front-end issues across HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript — resolving cross-browser and responsive/mobile compatibility problems, layout regressions, and client-side performance bottlenecks.
  • Manage and maintain content management systems (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla): perform plugin/module updates, theme maintenance, security patching, scheduled backups, and site migrations with minimal downtime.
  • Deploy website code and static assets using Git, FTP/SFTP, CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI); coordinate release windows, perform pre- and post-deployment checks, and rollback when necessary.
  • Implement and manage SSL/TLS certificate lifecycle (Let’s Encrypt, commercial CAs); configure HTTPS, HSTS, and certificate renewal automation to ensure secure site access.
  • Configure and administer DNS records, domain registration tasks, and integration with CDNs (Cloudflare, Akamai); troubleshoot DNS propagation, MX/CAA issues, and domain-related outages.
  • Optimize website speed and Core Web Vitals by applying caching strategies, configuring HTTP caching headers, integrating CDNs, compressing assets (gzip/brotli), and optimizing images and critical rendering paths.
  • Conduct routine backups and disaster recovery planning for web servers, application code, and databases; regularly test restore procedures and maintain recovery runbooks.
  • Analyze server and application logs (access/error logs, application logs) to identify errors, security events, and performance trends; escalate or remediate based on impact and SLA.
  • Apply security hardening practices for web servers and CMSs: keep packages up to date, configure firewalls and WAF rules, minimize surface area, and remediate vulnerabilities identified by scans.
  • Manage user accounts, site roles, and permissions within CMS platforms and hosting control panels ensuring least-privilege access and proper audit trails.
  • Coordinate with hosting providers, cloud infrastructure, and platform teams to provision, scale, and maintain web hosting environments, including containerized deployments or managed platforms.
  • Maintain and tune web-related databases (MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL) supporting websites: perform backups, indexing, query optimization, and basic schema change coordination.
  • Implement and maintain automated monitoring and synthetic transactions to validate critical user journeys and provide proactive detection of regressions in functionality or performance.
  • Create, update, and maintain technical documentation, runbooks, deployment guides, and knowledge base articles to enable consistent operations and faster incident resolution.
  • Provide L1/L2 technical support through ticketing systems (Jira, ServiceNow), debug issues reported by stakeholders, reproduce problems, and coordinate fixes with development teams.
  • Support accessibility (WCAG) and compliance initiatives by running accessibility audits, reporting issues, and implementing remediation for site components and templates.
  • Execute QA and smoke testing during and after deployments: validate functionality, forms, third-party integrations, and tracking scripts to ensure release quality.
  • Assist marketing and product teams with landing page builds, content updates, campaign configuration, and troubleshooting tracking/analytics tags to ensure accurate measurement and campaign uptime.
  • Participate in capacity planning and cost optimization for hosting and CDN services, recommending right-sizing, autoscaling, and caching improvements to balance cost and performance.
  • Configure and support integrations with third-party APIs and services (payment gateways, tag managers, CRMs), troubleshooting failures and coordinating vendor support as required.
  • Lead or contribute to cross-functional incident response, participate in on-call rotations, continuously improve incident response playbooks, and present post-incident reviews and action plans.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc content migrations, template updates, and small development requests from stakeholders, coordinating handoffs to developers when needed.
  • Assist with analytics implementation validation (Google Analytics, GA4, Tag Manager) to ensure pages and conversions are tracked correctly.
  • Run periodic vulnerability scans, report findings to security teams, and track remediation progress for web-facing assets.
  • Provide training and documentation for content authors and internal teams on CMS best practices, deployment windows, and security hygiene.
  • Contribute to performance and SEO audits by implementing recommended technical fixes (structured data, canonical tags, meta tags, robots directives).
  • Help maintain the internal web operations roadmap and propose improvements to reduce manual work and increase automation across release and monitoring workflows.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Strong knowledge of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for troubleshooting and lightweight front-end fixes.
  • Hands-on experience with popular CMS platforms (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla) including plugin/module management and theme troubleshooting.
  • Web server administration experience with Apache, Nginx, or IIS; virtual host and reverse proxy configuration.
  • Experience with Linux server administration (Ubuntu, CentOS) and basic shell scripting for automation.
  • Familiarity with Git workflows and deployment mechanisms (Git, CI/CD pipelines, FTP/SFTP).
  • DNS configuration and troubleshooting experience, including working with registrars and DNS providers.
  • SSL/TLS certificate management and HTTPS configuration experience.
  • Practical experience with CDNs (Cloudflare, AWS CloudFront, Akamai) and caching strategies for performance optimization.
  • Basic database knowledge for web apps (MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL) including backups and simple query tuning.
  • Proficiency with monitoring and logging tools (New Relic, Datadog, Prometheus, ELK/EFK, Pingdom).
  • Experience with web performance optimization techniques (image optimization, lazy loading, caching headers, minification).
  • Familiarity with security best practices: WAFs, firewall rules, vulnerability scanning, and patch management.
  • Understanding of REST APIs, JSON/XML and troubleshooting API integrations.
  • Experience with backup/restore procedures and disaster recovery planning for web assets.
  • Knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG) and basic remediation techniques.

Soft Skills

  • Strong analytical problem-solving and root cause diagnosis skills.
  • Clear written and verbal communication — able to explain technical issues to non-technical stakeholders.
  • Customer-service orientation and ability to prioritize incidents under SLA pressure.
  • Team collaboration — works well with developers, marketers, security, and infrastructure teams.
  • Detail-oriented with strong documentation and runbook creation habits.
  • Time management and ability to manage multiple concurrent tickets and projects.
  • Adaptability to rapidly changing environments and emerging web technologies.
  • Proactive mindset — recommends improvements and automations to reduce manual toil.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • High school diploma or equivalent plus relevant IT/web certifications (CompTIA A+, Linux+, AWS Cloud Practitioner, or vendor CMS certifications).
  • Practical demonstrable experience with web hosting, CMS, or hands-on server administration.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Web Development, or related technical discipline.
  • Additional training or certifications in web security, cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP), or DevOps tooling is a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Technology
  • Web Development / Web Design
  • Systems Administration

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 1–5 years of hands-on experience supporting and maintaining production websites, CMS platforms, or web infrastructure.

Preferred: 3+ years of practical experience in web/server administration, CMS management, and production incident response; prior experience with on-call rotations and web performance/security tooling.

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