Amplience is a commerce-led platform: Dynamic Content for structured content, plus media delivery and a content hub for assets. Teams that already run it hire a developer to fix content models that grew unchecked, speed up media delivery, or connect it cleanly to a commerce engine. Teams that want out hire us to plan the exit. Wider project work is on our Amplience services page.
What does an Amplience developer work on?
- Content type design. Amplience content types are JSON schemas. A developer refactors overlapping schemas, uses linked content and hierarchies sensibly, and versions changes without breaking live pages.
- Delivery. Fetching content by delivery key, caching at the edge, and keeping previews and published content apart in the front end.
- Media. Image sets, transforms and templates, and the front end patterns that decide whether pages ship the right image sizes.
- Commerce connection. Joining product data from your commerce engine to Amplience content on category and product pages.
- Automation. Webhooks, the CLI and import scripts that promote content types between hubs and environments.
- Editor tooling. Visualisation and extensions so editors see the real page while they edit.
- Exit work. Exporting content, mapping schemas to a new CMS and moving media with redirects.
What do we vet in an Amplience developer?
- Schema design under change: how the candidate adds a field to a type that already has thousands of entries.
- Delivery behaviour: publish timing, cache invalidation after a publish, and why a preview can differ from live.
- Image performance in the front end, including responsive sets and format choice.
- Hub and environment promotion: who owns the CLI scripts and how failures are caught.
- Experience with a commerce platform on the other side, because the join between product and content is where most bugs sit.
- Honest judgment about what should live in Amplience and what belongs in the commerce engine.
Stay on Amplience or move?
Amplience pays off when many campaigns, locales and media assets flow through one team and the commerce stack is already built around it. It pays off less when most of your content is plain pages and a few reusable components, because you then carry a commerce-grade platform for editorial work. We put the options in writing after the audit: tidy and keep, split media from content, or migrate content to another headless CMS. When one retailer ran separate CMS instances per brand, consolidating them cut publish time by about 65%, as set out in our omnichannel retail case study. That project used Payload, not Amplience, so read it as a consolidation example only. For the move itself, see migration services.
What does an Amplience developer do first?
- Reads the hub: every content type, and which ones nothing uses.
- Reviews schema debt, delivery caching and image handling, and ships one small change.
- Takes the first planned piece, such as merging duplicate content types or fixing preview so editors stop publishing just to check a page.
How do you engage an Amplience developer?
One dedicated developer covers most schema and front end work. Add people through IT staff augmentation when campaigns and locales multiply, or give a scoped project to a dedicated team. Rates across roles and seniority run from $50 to $150 per hour, quoted after a call. For other platforms, see hire headless CMS developers.
