How to Hire a Drupal Developer: A Complete Guide

Key Takeaways

Hiring a great Drupal developer requires a structured process that evaluates both technical ability and how well candidates align with your team’s goals.
Top Drupal developers bring strong PHP and module development skills, but also clear communication, ownership, and the ability to work across product and engineering.
Working with a recruiting partner can help you access vetted Drupal talent faster, especially if you’re hiring internationally or under tight timelines.

Drupal might not have the name recognition of WordPress or Shopify—but while those platforms shine in simplicity or e-commerce, Drupal is built for flexibility, security, and scale. It’s why organizations like NASA and the US government rely on it.

If your project needs serious flexibility and scalability, Drupal can deliver. But only if you have the right developer.

Unfortunately, finding someone who can write clean code, solve real business problems, and collaborate effectively is harder than it should be.

This guide is here to help. Whether you’re hiring in-office, remotely within the US, or looking internationally, we’ll walk you through how to hire Drupal developers without wasting time or budget. You’ll get a breakdown of the skills to prioritize, real salary benchmarks, sourcing tips, hiring best practices, interview questions, and common mistakes to avoid.

What Does a Drupal Developer Do?

Drupal developers build and maintain flexible, scalable websites and web applications using the Drupal CMS.

They work primarily in PHP, building custom modules, configuring core functionality, managing integrations, and optimizing performance. They’re responsible for everything from setting up site architecture and user permissions to debugging back-end issues and applying security patches.

Many assist with front-end work, but their main value lies in extending and stabilizing Drupal’s back-end to meet business needs.

You’ll often find them working alongside project managers, UX designers, and front-end developers as part of a broader team.

That said, some Drupal developers take on full-stack responsibilities, especially on smaller teams. These developers may work with front-end technologies like Twig templates, SCSS, and JavaScript—but typically only to implement and support functionality rather than to lead on UI or UX design.

Essentially, Drupal developers are the technical backbone that ensures your Drupal site runs efficiently, stays secure, and can scale as your business grows.

How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Drupal Developer?

Hiring a Drupal developer isn’t cheap, especially in the US. Salaries have climbed significantly in recent years, driven by increasing demand and a shrinking pool of skilled PHP developers.

The JetBrains Developer Ecosystem survey shows PHP usage has been steadily declining. As fewer developers focus on PHP, great PHP developers (and by extension, great Drupal developers) are getting harder to find.

In the US, back-end developers earn between $68,000 and $219,000 per year, depending on experience:

Junior: $68,000 – $141,000
Mid-level: $82,000 – $163,000
Senior: $100,000 – $219,000

If those numbers feel steep, that’s because they are. It’s one of the main reasons many US-based companies are exploring offshore Drupal development.

For example, in Latin America, where the cost of living is significantly lower, back-end developers with comparable skills command far more accessible salaries. These are the ranges we typically see companies hiring at:

Junior: $30,000 – $48,000
Mid-level: $48,000 – $60,000
Senior: $60,000 – $100,000

That translates to savings of 40% to 66%, depending on seniority, without compromising on quality. Many engineers in Latin America are highly experienced, speak fluent English, and work in time zones that are the same or adjacent to US time zones. Hiring from this region allows companies to either save budget or reinvest in building a larger, more versatile team.

These salary differences reflect local economic conditions, not differences in talent. Paying fairly within the context of a local market allows you to access world-class talent while still gaining a cost advantage.

Man looking at a computer screen with code on it.

What Skills Should You Look For When Hiring a Drupal Developer?

Hiring the right Drupal developer means finding candidates who bring a mix of strong back-end skills, clear communication, and a thoughtful approach to building scalable systems that support your business long-term.

Here’s how to break that down.

Hard skills (the must-haves)

These are the foundational technical skills every Drupal developer should bring to the table.

PHP proficiency: Since Drupal is built on PHP, your developer needs to write clean, maintainable code in this language. They should be comfortable working within Drupal’s hook system, OOP patterns, and Symfony components.
Drupal 9/10 architecture: A strong grasp of modern Drupal versions is critical. Look for developers who understand how to structure content types, configure Views, and manage configuration files using Drupal’s built-in tools.
Module development: Both custom and contributed modules are core to how Drupal sites scale. Your candidate should be able to write custom modules from scratch, extend existing ones, and know when to use each approach.
REST APIs and integrations: Many Drupal projects involve integrating with CRMs, ERPs, or marketing platforms. Look for experience working with RESTful APIs or JSON:API to connect external systems.
Version control with Git: This is a basic expectation on any modern development team. Ask how they’ve used Git in collaborative environments and whether they’re familiar with branching strategies like Git Flow.
Database experience: Drupal primarily uses MySQL and PostgreSQL. A good developer should be able to write queries, understand database structure, and debug performance issues at the query level.

Soft skills (equally important)

While technical ability is essential, soft skills are just as important—especially on cross-functional teams. Drupal developers often work closely with designers, product managers, and other engineers. Strong communication, accountability, and the ability to take feedback well all contribute to smoother collaboration and better outcomes.

Clear communication: Look for candidates who can explain their technical decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
Problem-solving mindset: Drupal is a flexible platform. However, that flexibility can introduce complexity. Strong candidates know how to troubleshoot issues methodically and propose scalable solutions that align with product goals.
Accountability and ownership: You want someone who takes initiative and responsibility, not someone who waits to be told what to fix. Ask about times they’ve owned a project or had to make tough trade-offs.
Receptiveness to feedback: A developer’s ability to grow often depends on how they receive input. Ask how they handle code reviews or what they’ve learned from past feedback.
Team collaboration: Great Drupal projects rarely happen in isolation. The best developers know how to work within Agile teams, contribute during standups, and align their work with sprint priorities.

Nice-to-have skills (the differentiators)

These bonus skills aren’t required, but they can make onboarding smoother and your project stronger.

Front-end experience: While not all Drupal devs touch the UI, familiarity with Twig templating, SCSS, and basic JavaScript is helpful. This is especially true for full-stack roles or smaller teams.
Docker and CI/CD experience: Automated testing and deployment pipelines are standard in modern teams. Developers with Docker or CI/CD experience (e.g., GitHub Actions, GitLab CI) can deliver code more reliably.
Scrum or Kanban familiarity: According to Drupal’s own developer survey, Scrum and Kanban are the most widely used project management frameworks in the Drupal space. Familiarity helps devs integrate more easily into team workflows.
Use of profiling and debugging tools: Xdebug is listed as the most popular tool among Drupal developers. Proficiency here shows that your candidate knows how to track down performance issues and build more efficient code.
Community contribution: Not essential, but candidates who’ve contributed to Drupal.org modules or forums tend to stay current and demonstrate a strong grasp of Drupal’s inner workings.

Where Can You Find and Hire Great Drupal Developers?

Hiring a Drupal developer starts with knowing where to look. That means answering two big questions:

Should you hire locally, remotely within the US, or look internationally?
Which sourcing channels are best suited for this kind of role?

Let’s walk through both.

Deciding between local, US-remote, or international talent

The first step is deciding how wide to cast your net. While Drupal development can be done effectively from anywhere, the right location strategy depends on your priorities: collaboration, cost, speed, and experience level.

Local (in-office): Hiring someone onsite makes sense if your team is office-based and you need regular in-person collaboration. It simplifies admin and communication, but limits your pool and comes with higher costs, especially in major US cities.
US-remote: Expanding your search across the US gives you access to more talent while retaining cultural familiarity and shared business practices. But you’re still paying US-level salaries, and demand for experienced developers remains high.
International/offshore: Looking globally unlocks a broader range of candidates. International hiring can offer significant cost savings, as offshore developer rates are often lower while still delivering high-caliber skills. Drupal is widely used in regions like Latin America, South Asia, and Eastern Europe, all of which produce strong technical talent.

For many US companies, offshore Drupal development in Latin America strikes the right balance:

Real-time collaboration thanks to nearly full-day working hour overlap
High English proficiency
Strong cultural alignment
Sustainable, fair salary expectations

Choosing the right sourcing channel

Once you’ve decided where to hire, the next step is choosing how to find and engage candidates.

Each channel offers its own mix of reach, speed, and screening effort.

Whichever sourcing channel you choose, the key is to match the method to your hiring priorities.

If you have the time and internal resources to screen thoroughly, job boards and community forums can work well. If speed, quality, or international hiring are at the top of your list, it’s worth partnering with a recruiter who already knows the Drupal talent landscape—especially if you’re hiring outside the US for the first time.

The goal isn’t just to fill the role. It’s to find someone who can hit the ground running, collaborate well, and stick around. Choose the path that gets you there fastest without cutting corners.

How to Hire the Best Remote Drupal Developers: Best Practices

Hiring a Drupal developer isn’t the hard part. Hiring someone who can write clean, scalable code and work well with your team is where most companies hit a wall.

Coming back to the Drupal developer survey results, we see that Drupal developers are working all over the world. From Scandinavia and Eastern Europe to Latin American tech hubs like Brazil and Argentina, the talent pool is wide but competitive.

That global distribution makes it both easier to access skilled developers and harder to know where to start, especially when hiring remotely or across borders.

However, the process gets much easier when you approach it systematically, from job description to offer. Below is a proven, stage-by-stage process that helps companies find the right Drupal talent faster.

Stage 1: Before and during sourcing

Define what you actually need (and skip the unicorn wish list)

Before you post anything, take a step back and think about what kind of Drupal developer your team really needs. Are you looking for someone to build complex back-end logic? Extend custom modules? Or also touch some front-end theming?

Clarity matters. Companies often over-specify requirements, layering on front-end frameworks, DevOps experience, and API architecture until the role becomes unrealistic. Focus instead on the core tech stack, Drupal version experience (9 or 10), and business-critical tasks they’ll actually handle.

Create a job description that sets expectations (and attracts the right people)

Your job description should act like a filter. Be clear about the Drupal-specific responsibilities, tools, and workflows you use. If you rely heavily on GitHub Actions for CI/CD, or your team works in two-week sprints using Scrum, say so.

Stage 2: Screening and evaluation

Don’t just skim resumes—test real-world skills

A polished resume doesn’t always reflect strong coding fundamentals. That’s why we recommend giving candidates a short, real-world test project. For Drupal developers, this could be debugging a broken module, refactoring a messy block of PHP, or building a lightweight API endpoint with tests.

This helps you evaluate how they code and think.

Review their work with them

Once the take-home is submitted, don’t just read through it alone. Schedule a short call to walk through their work together. Ask why they approached the problem a certain way.

Let them explain trade-offs. This reveals communication skills, collaboration style, and whether they actually understand their own code or just Googled a workaround.

Look for ownership and self-awareness

Great Drupal developers push code, but they also understand how their work fits into the bigger picture and how important it is to improve over time.

Ask about mistakes they’ve made and how they’ve handled feedback. If a candidate can’t explain what went wrong in a previous project (or blames others), that’s a red flag. The best developers are transparent, open to critique, and constantly learning.

Stage 3: Making the offer and closing the deal

Move fast—Drupal developers don’t stay available for long

If you find someone great, don’t sit on it. Good developers with strong communication skills and real-world Drupal experience get picked up quickly. Delays in scheduling interviews or extending an offer can cost you the best candidate on your list.

Build an offer that reflects what devs actually care about

Compensation matters, but it’s not the whole picture. According to the HackerRank 2025 Developer Skills Report, most developers prioritize opportunities for career growth and staying current with new technologies.

For Drupal developers, this means working on projects that involve the latest versions of Drupal (9 or 10), use modern tooling (like Docker, GitHub Actions, and API-first development), and offer room to lead or architect solutions and not just maintain legacy code.

Work-life balance, clear roadmaps, and a sense of ownership also carry weight. Offering flexibility, learning opportunities, and paid time off aligned with their region can make your offer stand out. This is especially true when hiring internationally.

Set expectations from day one

When you extend the offer, include a simple 30-60-90 day outline. What should success look like in the first month? What kind of support will they have? This helps your new hire ramp up faster and gives them a clearer sense of purpose from day one.

Hiring a great Drupal developer requires more than checking off technical boxes. It’s about identifying someone who can grow with your team, communicate effectively, and deliver stable, scalable work.

You can read more about how to make strong job offers and how doing so leads to securing and keeping top talent in our detailed guide.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring a Drupal Developer

Even with a solid hiring process, it’s easy to fall into patterns that lead to poor fits, delayed timelines, or talent walking away mid-process. Here are five common mistakes companies make when hiring Drupal developers. We’ll also show you how to avoid them.

Overemphasizing resumes or formal degrees

Some of the best developers don’t have traditional computer science degrees. This is especially true in Latin America, where many engineers start working before finishing school, or never pursued a degree at all.

Our recruiters have seen that if you filter out candidates based solely on education, you risk missing highly skilled developers who’ve contributed to major Drupal builds, customized core modules, or improved site performance in high-traffic environments.

What to do instead: Focus on real-world experience and problem-solving skills. Ask candidates about the modules they’ve built, the challenges they’ve solved, and the architecture decisions they’ve made. The best developers can walk you through those projects clearly and confidently.

Dragging out the process with too many interviews

Drupal developers are in high demand. If your interview process takes weeks and involves multiple coding tests and redundant calls, strong candidates will move on.

What to do instead: Set a tight timeline with no more than 2–3 rounds: an intro call, a short take-home or live coding session, and a final decision review. Keep communication clear and fast. If you wait, someone else will move faster.

Not being transparent about your tech stack or roadmap

It’s a red flag for candidates when a company isn’t clear about whether Drupal is part of the future or just a legacy system they plan to phase out.

If you’re unclear about which version of Drupal you’re using or whether a migration is planned, you’ll likely lose candidates who want long-term growth and technical relevance.

What to do instead: Be upfront. Explain the current stack, any planned upgrades or migrations, and how this role fits into the roadmap. It builds trust and helps both sides assess fit.

Skipping the coding test—or not reviewing it together

Handing out a generic assessment and evaluating it silently doesn’t tell you much. You’re hiring a collaborator, not just a coder.

What to do instead: Assign a short, relevant task (like building or debugging a module), then review it together in a call. This gives insight into their thinking, communication style, and ability to explain trade-offs.

Underestimating the importance of communication skills

Technical strength is essential, but Drupal developers often work with designers, content teams, and stakeholders. If they can’t clearly explain their decisions or receive feedback constructively, they’ll slow down your team.

What to do instead: Pay close attention to how candidates communicate during interviews, email follow-ups, and test reviews. Look for clarity, curiosity, and collaboration, not just technical expertise.

Avoiding these mistakes helps you move faster and improves your chances of finding a Drupal developer who’s aligned with your team, invested in the work, and ready to contribute from day one.

Why Working With a Recruiting Partner Makes a Difference

We’ll admit it—we’re biased. Helping companies hire top developers is what we do. But we’ve also seen the difference it makes when businesses stop trying to go it alone.

Most of our clients come to us after spending weeks—or months—searching on their own. They’ve posted the job, sifted through unqualified resumes, maybe even hired someone who didn’t work out. By the time they reach out, they’re behind schedule, over budget, and still don’t have the right developer.

That’s where a good recruiting partner changes the game.

When you work with someone who specializes in sourcing developers, especially across international markets, you cut out the noise. You get pre-vetted candidates who’ve already been screened for technical skill, communication, and cultural fit, so you’re not starting from scratch. You also get guidance on salary expectations, role clarity, and how to build an offer that actually lands your first-choice hire.

This is especially true for growing teams looking to hire offshore developers for their startup or scaleup without getting bogged down in the complexity of international sourcing, contracts, and compliance.

A partner with extensive experience in these markets already knows how to navigate local expectations, assess candidates across languages and cultures, and help you create fair and competitive offers.

Final Thoughts

Great Drupal developers do more than write functional code. They solve real problems, communicate clearly, and contribute meaningfully to your product’s success. But finding the right fit takes a structured, thoughtful hiring process.

At Near, we take the time to understand exactly what our clients need in a Drupal developer. That could mean deep module development experience, strong API integration skills, or the ability to contribute across both product and engineering teams.

We connect US companies with vetted Drupal developers in Latin America who offer time zone alignment, clean code, and fair-market rates.

If you’re ready to bring a great Drupal developer onto your team, book a free consultation to see how Near can help.