WHAT DOES A DRUPAL DEVELOPER DO?
Updated: Mai 29, 2025 - The Drupal Developer designs and implements new features, maintains existing functionality, and ensures high-performance website architecture and availability. This position collaborates with front-end developers and clients to deliver visually appealing, intuitive implementations while creating and maintaining technical documentation and training materials. The developer also migrates applications to higher versions, writes efficient, testable code, and optimizes both headless Drupal sites and existing platforms for international clients.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Drupal Developer
1. Drupal Developer Job Description
- Web Development: Develop new multilingual websites on Drupal
- Website Maintenance: Maintain and fulfill new requirements of the already developed website
- Requirements Analysis: Understand requirements communicated in written or verbal form
- Communication: Communicate with different team members, Project Manager, and client
- Code Repository Management: Maintain the code repository of the project on TFS or Git
- Deployment and Configuration: Take responsibility for the deployment and configuration of the website and database
- Debugging and Troubleshooting: Take responsibility for debugging and resolving issues
- Integration: Integrate with 3rd party applications
- Leadership: Lead the Drupal development discussions and implementation with minimal supervision
2. Drupal Developer Details and Accountabilities
- Functional Analysis: Analyze new functionalities/software changes, including functional use cases and requirements, providing estimations using the client estimation tool
- Solution Design: Design solutions by following Drupal's best practices and standards
- Development and Maintenance: Perform Drupal development and maintenance activities on existing applications in the client's account
- Website Development: Develop performant and maintainable Drupal websites
- Team Leadership: Lead the team alongside DevOps tools to speed up delivery and ensure quality
- Testing and Troubleshooting: Take responsibility for testing, maintenance, and troubleshooting of existing applications
- Communication: Communicate with the project team and with the client
- Feature Development: Maintain and develop new features in existing software/websites
- Problem-Solving: Understand complex business-logical challenges and find simplicity-seeking solutions
- Code Quality: Use the best coding standards and practices to ensure the quality of the code
3. Drupal Developer Additional Details
- Software Engineering Standards: Drive their software engineering standards across their products through technology, process, education, knowledge sharing, and innovation.
- Scrum Participation: Actively participate in their daily Scrum stand-ups, planning sessions, product reviews, and retrospective meetings.
- Acceptance Criteria: Engage in discussions around the acceptance criteria to deliver agreed functionality fit for release throughout each sprint cycle.
- Architecture and Engineering Culture: Work alongside other Engineers and Heads of Product Development to contribute to their Architecture and Engineering culture.
- BDD and TDD: Work within a BDD (Behaviour Driven Development) and TDD (Test Driven Development) approach to ensure solutions are robust and technically fit for purpose.
- Innovation: Bring in innovative ideas on technology and processes to improve the product and delivery.
- Collaboration: Work with business analysts, developers, and other team members to ensure that the code fulfills the requirements and functions as intended.
- Software Documentation: Participate in the development of software user manuals.
- Testing and Evaluation: Perform testing and evaluation of the code.
- Team Leadership: Instruct, assign, direct, and check the work of other software developers on the development team.
4. Drupal Developer Essential Functions
- System Enhancement: Enhance existing systems by analyzing business objectives, preparing an action plan, and identifying areas for improvement.
- Technology Research: Investigate and develop skills in new technologies that aid in the development of core web applications.
- Web Feature Enhancement: Enhance web features, create technical specifications and testing plans, and participate in requirements analysis.
- Process Documentation: Maintain process flow and documentation, and work from written specifications and guidelines.
- Collaboration: Collaborate with internal teams to produce software design and architecture.
- End-User Training: Train the end-user or client on the final product and provide technical support.
- Data Modeling: Model data for content management systems, considering both the application structure and the end-user authoring experience.
- Problem Solving: Resolve problems with software and respond to suggestions for improvements and enhancements.
- Software Management: Responsible for designing, implementing, and managing software programs.
- Efficient Coding: Work on writing and implementing efficient code based on user requirement specifications.
5. Drupal Developer General Responsibilities
- Feature Design: Responsible for designing and implementing new features and functionality along with the maintenance of existing features and functions.
- Design Support: Assist design sessions during solution implementation and provide support during testing.
- Website Architecture: Establish and guide the website’s architecture and ensure high performance and availability.
- Collaboration: Work closely with front-end developers and customers to ensure an effective, visually appealing, and intuitive implementation.
- Training: Create and maintain all training and support materials, including quick guides, technical documentation, and presentations.
- Application Migration: Migrate applications to higher versions.
- Efficient Coding: Write well-designed, testable, efficient code by following best software development practices.
- Design Documentation: Produce accurate design documents, data, and design models that are implementable and handle the load with migration capability.
- Client Management: Work for leading (international) clients, such as Mentos, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and Natuurmonumenten.
- Headless Drupal Setup: Set up headless Drupal sites from scratch and ensure the optimization and maintenance of existing sites.