Software developer and WordCamp Europe Krakow organiser
WPPoland is one senior software developer, Mariusz Szatkowski, working on web and e-commerce systems: server code in PHP and TypeScript, WordPress and WooCommerce, the integrations between a store or site and the systems behind it, and front ends in Astro and Next.js deployed to Cloudflare. The base is Gdynia, on the coast. There is no Krakow office and no local team, and this page does not pretend otherwise.
The Krakow connection is specific. Mariusz joined the organising team of WordCamp Europe in 2024, in the budget track, and worked on the 2025 edition in Basel and the 2026 edition in Krakow. That meant months of work on an event held in the city, and the days of the event itself spent at the ICE Krakow Congress Centre.
WordCamp Europe 2026 in Krakow, the wall listing organisers and volunteers. Own photo.
The general description of the work, the stack and how to evaluate any developer lives on the software developer page. This page covers what is different when the client is a Krakow company.
How many people attended WordCamp Europe 2026 in Krakow
WordCamp Europe is the continental WordPress conference, organised by volunteers. The 2026 edition was held in Krakow from 4 to 6 June 2026 at the ICE Krakow Congress Centre. The official recap on WordPress.org reports 2,458 ticket holders from 81 countries, 49 talks and eight hands-on workshops. Those are the post-event figures; the pre-event homepage estimates were rounder and higher, and the recap is the number to quote.
The official organisers page lists Mariusz in the Budget Team, one of five people there, and describes that team as the financial expertise behind the event, before, during and after it.
Budget work on a volunteer conference is less glamorous than speaking, and more useful for judging a contractor. It means committing to costs long before the event, when attendance is still an estimate, and being able to account for every line afterwards. The same habits carry into software work: a written scope with its assumptions, an estimate that says what it does not cover, and no surprise invoice at the end.
Members of the organising team on the main stage, first conference day. Own photo.
A longer look at what the event meant for WordPress agencies and freelancers is in the WordCamp Europe 2026 recap.
Who buys web development in Krakow
Krakow’s economy has a shape that matters for anyone selling software work into it. According to ABSL, the business services association, at the end of the first quarter of 2025 nearly 108,000 people worked in 312 business service centres in the city. That is a large share of the potential buyers: finance, HR, IT and customer operations centres serving a group headquartered somewhere else.
Alongside them sits the Krakow Technology Park, which says it has supported entrepreneurs in Małopolska for nearly 30 years and reports 600 investors in its economic zone and 117 tenants in the technology park itself (figures from its site, September 2026). Add product companies, e-commerce sellers and the agencies that serve all of them, and the demand for web work is broad.
What a service centre usually needs from an outside web developer is not its core system. The core runs on group platforms owned by a central IT function. The gaps appear around it:
- The public web layer. Careers sites, local market sites and campaign pages that the group platform does not cover and the centre has to run itself, often on WordPress.
- Integrations nobody owns. A WooCommerce store for employee or partner sales, a form that has to reach a CRM, a feed from an ERP into a site. Small in scope, awkward in ownership.
- Inherited code. A site built by an agency years ago, still in production, with nobody in the building who knows how it works.
Those are the jobs a remote senior developer fits well, because they are defined, bounded and need someone who reads existing code before changing it.
Hiring a remote software developer for a Krakow company
Working with a developer based at the other end of the country changes a few things and leaves most of them alone.
What stays the same. The same time zone and working hours, the same language for Polish clients, the same invoicing and tax system. Code goes into your repository, under your organisation’s accounts, from the first commit. Nothing sits on a personal account that you would need to ask for later.
What changes. There is no on-site phase. Kick-off happens in writing, demos happen on staging every week, and decisions are recorded where they can be found again. For a service centre used to working with colleagues in other countries, this is the normal way of working anyway. For a company that expects a developer to sit in its office twice a week, it is the wrong arrangement, and it is better to know that before signing.
What your procurement will ask. Service centres and larger companies register outside contractors: a company record, a contract, sometimes a security questionnaire and an access request per system. That is fine and worth starting early, because access approval is often the slowest step of the first week. The scope document names every system that needs access and who approves it.
Developer community and meetups in Krakow
Krakow has one of the deepest developer communities in Poland, and it is worth knowing when a local hire is the better answer. Meetup groups give a rough measure. As of September 2026, WordUp Kraków, the local WordPress meetup, had 536 members and KrakowJS, the JavaScript group, 4,974. PHPers Kraków held its first meetup on 10 July 2014.
Those numbers say two useful things. First, the JavaScript market is large and competitive, so a Krakow company hiring a full-time front-end or Node.js developer has a real pool to choose from. Second, the WordPress and PHP communities are smaller and more specialised, which is where a senior outside developer is harder to replace with a quick local hire.
This page does not claim that WPPoland is part of those groups or attends their events. The claim is narrower: the Krakow market has its own talent, and a remote contractor should be the choice for a defined piece of work, not a substitute for building a team you actually need.
Software development services for Krakow companies
The work is the same kind described on the software developer page, with some items that come up more often for Polish companies.
- WooCommerce with Polish payments and invoicing. Checkout flows with the payment methods Polish customers expect, and invoice data leaving the store in a shape an invoicing system can pass to KSeF. The Ministry of Finance set the dates: issuing through KSeF became mandatory on 1 February 2026 for taxpayers whose 2024 sales exceeded 200 million złoty, and on 1 April 2026 for the rest, with a deferral for the smallest issuers. Receiving invoices through KSeF has been mandatory since 1 February 2026. The store does not talk to KSeF directly in most setups; the invoicing layer does, and the store has to feed it correctly.
- Accessibility work that the law now requires. The Polish act implementing the European Accessibility Act has applied since 28 June 2025 and covers e-commerce services. Microenterprises providing services do not have to adapt. For everyone else, a store that fails keyboard navigation or form labelling is now a compliance problem as well as a lost sale.
- Integrations with group systems. A site or store connected to the ERP, CRM or identity system that the group already runs, with a clear rule about which system owns which data.
- Headless and edge front ends. Astro or Next.js on top of WordPress or WooCommerce, deployed to Cloudflare, where speed and a smaller attack surface are worth the extra moving part.
- AI and MCP integrations. Connecting a site or store to AI agents in a way that is read-only by default and logged. The public WooCommerce MCP server below is an example.
Remote developer, local hire or agency in Krakow
| Situation | Better fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| One product, years of full-time work ahead | Permanent hire in Krakow | The local pool is deep, and a product needs someone who stays |
| A defined project with a fixed deadline | Remote independent developer | A written scope, one accountable person, no ramp-up of a team |
| Design, mobile app and web together | Krakow agency or software house | Several disciplines at once are outside what one developer covers |
| An inherited WordPress or WooCommerce system nobody understands | Remote senior developer | Reading and stabilising existing code is the core of the job |
| An integration between the store and a group ERP | Remote senior developer, with group IT | Needs integration experience plus access decided by the group |
| 24/7 operations with on-call rotation | A managed service provider | One person cannot staff a rotation |
The table is deliberately not flattering. If your situation sits in the first, third or last row, a different kind of supplier will serve you better.
How to verify the developer’s experience
Claims about a developer are cheap. These can be checked before any contact:
- WordCamp Europe 2026 organisers page, listing the Budget Team: europe.wordcamp.org/2026/organisers.
- wppoland/woocommerce-mcp on GitHub: a read-only MCP server for WooCommerce, written in TypeScript and published under the MIT licence.
- wppoland/hidden-text-detector on GitHub: a Python tool that finds hidden text and prompt injection in PDF and DOCX files.
- The wordpress.org profile motylanogha, listing the plugins worked on.
- LinkedIn, with the contract roles: full-stack engineer for a Vienna-based digital agency since October 2025, WordPress and WooCommerce developer for Equiqo in Berlin since January 2021, and co-organiser of CMSConf in Gdynia since October 2025.
Client names inside those engagements stay confidential. The anonymised case studies linked from the software developer page describe the kind of work without naming the client.
Services not included
- Graphic design, wireframes and UX design. The layout comes from the client or its designer; the work is implementing it well.
- Native mobile apps. Web and e-commerce only.
- 24/7 on-call support. Support runs in working hours with agreed response times.
- A team on day one. If a project needs five people from the start, hire a software house.
- On-site presence in Krakow. The work is remote. Being in Krakow for WordCamp Europe does not make it a local service.
WordPress developer in Krakow
For WordPress and WooCommerce specifically, including performance, maintenance and theme and plugin development, see the WordPress developer in Krakow page. This page is about the wider software work around those systems.
Next step
If you run a web or e-commerce system in Krakow that has to work reliably and be understood by the next person who opens it, describe it in writing. A reply with questions or a first scope usually follows within one working day.
