Given these challenges, the objective was straightforward: to build a dynamic, candidate-first website that aligns fully with Jan De Nul’s renewed visual identity.
Jan De Nul: new career website
A new career website was built in Drupal for Jan De Nul, fully aligned with their new branding and designed with a strong focus on the candidate experience.
A global engineering company with a family-owned foundation
Jan De Nul is a family-owned Belgian engineering company active in dredging, offshore wind, marine construction and environmental remediation. Its work shapes coastlines, ports and energy infrastructure around the world. In 2024, the company achieved a record €4 billion in revenue, spread over 302 projects in 35 countries.
The Case
Challenge
A static job site with outdated content, disconnected from the new branding, without a CMS and lacking insights into user behaviour. On top of that, the website was difficult to manage internally, leaving Jan De Nul’s team dependent on an external partner for structural changes.
Solution
Dropsolid built a new careers platform in headless Drupal, based on candidate research and with video-first storytelling at its core. The platform is integrated with Jan De Nul's ATS system and designed around both the candidate and the internal team.
Result
The Jan De Nul team manages the website in-house. Candidates are guided through the recruitment process, and the team uses data analysis for continuous optimisation.
3 reasons why the job site needed replacement
Outdated technology without CMS
Jan De Nul’s previous job site was highly static and lacked flexibility. While the HR team could add pages and publish news updates, they had no control over the site’s structure. Any structural changes required external support, which often led to outdated content remaining live for too long and limited use of video material. What was needed was a modern, user-friendly website that could grow over time and be fully managed by the internal team.
No data or insights
Jan De Nul had limited visibility into how visitors engaged with the job site. There were few options to track user behaviour: which content performed well, which pages attracted traffic and where visitors dropped off. Without that data, there was little room for meaningful optimisation. The new job site was built to change that, enabling actionable insights, data-driven decisions and continuous improvement.
No integrated experience
After the rebranding of the corporate website, the job site no longer matched the look and feel of Jan De Nul’s digital ecosystem, neither visually nor functionally. It felt like a disconnected component, while candidates today expect a consistent, seamless experience. Although there was a link with the ATS system, the job module offered little usability: candidates were presented with a long list of vacancies and only limited filtering options. The ambition was clear: to tell one coherent story, both in appearance and in experience. Jan De Nul’s new brand identity needed to resonate not just with clients and partners, but also with future employees.
Built on Drupal: open, intuitive and future-proof
The previous job site was a closed, custom-built solution without a CMS. The new career site, just like the corporate website, was built in Drupal and seamlessly integrated into Jan De Nul’s broader digital ecosystem, with a consistent visual identity and full control for the internal team.
The main reason for choosing Drupal was control and independence. Jan De Nul no longer wanted to rely on an external web development partner to make changes. With Drupal, they now manage their website entirely in-house, quickly and intuitively.
Drupal’s open-source philosophy was another key driver:
No vendor lock-in – full freedom in partners and technical choices
No license fees – enabling structural cost savings
A vibrant community – constant innovation and long-term support
Modular and scalable – easily adaptable to new needs
Multi-user and user-friendly – built for collaboration across teams
Future-proof – technology that keeps evolving and improving
Drupal was more than just a technical choice, it was a sustainable one, fully aligned with Jan De Nul’s long-term ambitions.
One brand experience
A key step in the project was integrating the career site into Jan De Nul’s existing corporate environment. Previously, both websites operated completely separately, leading to a fragmented user experience. The new approach brings them together as one cohesive whole, with a consistent look and feel fully aligned with the refreshed branding. On top of that, the site was connected to the ATS system, ensuring that job listings are always up-to-date and automatically displayed.
