Full Stack Engineer

Full Stack PHP / Laravel Engineer

Location: Reading Area – 1 day/month on-site

Core Focus Backend-heavy engineering role for an established UK digital platform. Primary responsibility is tackling technical debt, refactoring legacy architecture, and optimizing application performance alongside new feature delivery.

Strict Requirements

• PHP 8 & Laravel: Commercial experience with Eloquent, Form Requests, Queued Jobs, and custom Artisan commands.
• Codebase Refactoring: Proven history of refactoring legacy codebases and improving system maintainability rather than just executing feature tickets.
• MySQL Optimization: Hands-on experience with indexing strategies, query analysis, and schema design.
• Stack Balance: 70/30 to 50/50 backend-to-frontend focus.
• Tooling: Docker, automated testing (PHPUnit), and modern utility CSS/JS (Tailwind, Alpine.js, or Vue).
• Location: Must be UK-based within commuting distance for 1 day/month on-site in the Reading area.

Responsibilities

• Build backend services end-to-end in PHP 8 and Laravel.
• Identify database/API performance bottlenecks and implement fixes.
• Contribute to Docker container setup and CI/CD pipelines.
• Ship code directly from local environment through to production in a lean, autonomous team