You can hire headless CMS developers from us who have shipped on the platform you run, whether that is Strapi, Payload, Sanity, Contentful or one of the others below. They join your team as a dedicated developer or a small team, and we vet each one on the skills that break headless projects: content modelling, preview, migrations and frontend integration.
This page explains what that role covers, what we test for, and which hire page fits your platform. If you are still choosing an architecture, start with our headless CMS development services page.
What does a headless CMS developer do?
A headless CMS developer builds both sides of a decoupled content platform. On the CMS side, they design content types and fields, configure roles, locales and workflows, and write the custom code the platform does not ship with: hooks, plugins, custom fields or admin views. On the frontend side, they fetch content through REST or GraphQL, render it in Next.js or Astro, and wire up preview so editors see a draft before it goes live.
Most of the job sits between those two sides. When an editor publishes, a webhook has to rebuild the right pages and clear the right caches. When the model changes, the frontend types and queries have to change with it. When content arrives from an old system, an import script has to map it cleanly. A developer who only knows the CMS admin panel, or only the frontend framework, struggles with exactly these tasks.
What we vet for on every platform
These checks apply on every platform. We ask candidates to walk through work they have shipped, not to recite definitions.
- Content modelling. Can they turn a set of existing pages into types, components and references, and explain where they would put a shared disclaimer or author block? Weak models show up later as duplicated content and editors who need developer help.
- Preview and publishing. Do they know how draft content reaches a preview URL on their platform, and how a publish event triggers revalidation? When preview breaks, editors stop trusting the site.
- Migrations. Have they written an import that runs again after a fix without creating duplicates, moves media, and keeps URLs? We ask how they handled rich text from the old system, since that is where imports usually break.
- Frontend integration. Can they type API responses, keep queries small, and choose between static generation, incremental revalidation and server rendering per page type?
- Performance. Do they know why a page is slow? We look at image handling, cache headers and over-fetching from the API first.
Hire by platform
Each platform has its own traps, so each one has its own hire page with the platform specific checks and first tasks.
| Platform | What we check on top of the basics | Hire page |
|---|---|---|
| Strapi | Strapi 5 Document Service API, plugin upgrades from v4, permissions | Hire Strapi developers |
| Payload | Config as code, access control functions, hooks, Next.js setup | Hire Payload developers |
| Sanity | GROQ queries, Studio customization, Portable Text rendering | Hire Sanity developers |
| Contentful | Content model limits, environments and migrations, apps | Hire Contentful developers |
| Storyblok | Component schemas, the Visual Editor bridge, nested blocks | Hire Storyblok developers |
| Directus | SQL schema design, flows, extensions, roles on existing tables | Hire Directus developers |
| Prismic | Slice Machine, slice design with marketing, preview setup | Hire Prismic developers |
| Hygraph | GraphQL schema design, remote sources, localization | Hire Hygraph developers |
| DatoCMS | Modular content, structured text, image API usage | Hire DatoCMS developers |
| Headless WordPress | WPGraphQL, custom fields, plugin audit before decoupling | Hire headless WordPress developers |
| Contentstack | Content types and global fields, branches, workflows | Hire Contentstack developers |
| Drupal | JSON:API, entity and field design, upgrades between major versions | Hire Drupal developers |
Engagement models
| Model | Fits when | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| Dedicated developer | You have a tech lead and a backlog, and need one more engineer | Full time on your project, in your sprints and your tools |
| Team extension | A migration or rebuild needs several people for a few months | Two or more developers, often a CMS specialist plus a frontend developer |
| Project | You want a defined result rather than hours | Fixed scope and price after a short audit; we run delivery |
Rates for our headless CMS developers fall between $50 and $150 per hour, depending on seniority and on how much architecture the role carries. Developers usually start after a short intro call where we agree on the platform and the first tasks. For the general model behind these options, see our page on IT staff augmentation.
What the first weeks usually look like
In the first days a new developer reads the content model, the frontend repository and the deployment setup, and asks editors what slows them down. The first tasks are usually small and visible: fix a broken preview, add a content type that marketing has been waiting for, or remove an over-fetching query from a slow template. After that comes the larger work you hired for, such as a migration script, a platform upgrade or a new frontend section.
When to hire a team instead
One developer is the wrong fit when the work has no owner on your side. If you need a whole squad with its own lead, look at how we hire a dedicated team. If you want an outside team to own scope, delivery and the migration plan end to end, compare that with working with a headless CMS agency.
Here is the kind of work our developers bring with them. For a US-based Series-B fintech, we moved a WordPress site with roughly 40 custom plugins to Payload and Next.js. Time to publish fell by about 65%, and organic traffic held through cutover. Read the headless CMS replatform case study.
