“Atlas CMS” is the name many teams still use for WP Engine’s headless WordPress setup. WP Engine now markets it as the Headless Platform, so the person you need is a headless WordPress engineer who knows Node.js hosting and Faust.js. We supply developers for that stack, as one dedicated engineer or as part of a team.
What the product is today
The backend is ordinary WordPress, used for editing and exposed through its APIs, with WPGraphQL as an option. The frontend runs separately on Node.js hosting, commonly Next.js. Faust.js, an open-source Next.js toolkit from WP Engine, handles previews and template hierarchy. As of October 2026 the Faust.js repository shows commits from this week, so the toolkit is maintained.
Pages elsewhere on our site still use the Atlas name, so we keep the page for people who search for it. See our Atlas CMS services page for the platform overview.
What a headless WordPress developer does for you
- Moves a theme-based WordPress site to a decoupled Next.js frontend without losing URLs.
- Models content with custom post types and fields, and exposes it through GraphQL or REST.
- Builds previews so editors see drafts before publishing, which is the first thing teams miss after going headless.
- Fixes caching and revalidation, so a published change appears on the site when it should.
- Audits plugins, since many do not work once the theme is gone.
- Upgrades Faust.js and WordPress across major versions.
What we vet for
- Why a plugin that renders on the front end breaks in a headless setup, and what replaces it.
- How WPGraphQL queries are shaped to avoid slow, deeply nested requests.
- How authentication works for previews and for the Faust.js plugin.
- How the candidate handles redirects, canonical URLs and sitemaps on the new frontend.
The first weeks
We start by auditing plugins, custom fields and URL structure. Then we ship one thin slice, a single template and content type working end to end with preview. If that slice holds, the rest of the site follows it.
Who this suits
This stack fits teams that keep WordPress editing because editors know it, but want a modern frontend and faster pages. It fits less well if you run many WordPress plugins that render output, or if your editors rely on a visual page builder. In that case we compare it with other headless options before any build starts.
Engagement models
Hire one developer into your team, extend it through IT staff augmentation, or take a dedicated team for a full replatform. Our hire headless WordPress developer page covers the same skill set without the vendor tie.
When you need more than a developer
If you are deciding whether to stay on WordPress at all, read our headless WordPress overview and the migration services page. For other platforms, see hire headless CMS developers.
