Role: Senior PHP Application Developer
Location: HQ in London, UK. Remote/office working as preferred.
Start date: ASAP
Reporting to: Lead Back-end Application Engineer
Salary: Competitive, depending on experience.
Contract: Permanent, full-time role
Company Overview:
ToucanTech is a fast-growing tech scale-up revolutionising community management with an all-in-one database, website, and comms system. The software is used by teams managing membership, alumni, fundraising, and special interest networks.
It is used in over 25 countries around the world by organisations including schools, charities, universities, museums, professional associations, and sports clubs. We’ve grown from 2 co-founders to an expanding team of over 60 Toucans based between London, Lisbon, Washington DC, and Sydney.
Role Overview:
We are seeking a motivated and experienced Senior PHP Application Developer to join our growing Engineering team. In this role, you will be responsible for developing, implementing, and maintaining robust backend systems using PHP and SQL. You will work closely with senior engineers to implement features, contribute to technical design, and maintain high standards of code quality. This is an excellent opportunity for a proven developer to grow their expertise and make a tangible impact on our product.
Role Responsibilities:
* Design, develop, test, and deploy reliable and scalable backend features and applications using PHP.
* Work with SQL databases (e.g., MySQL, Aurora) to implement new features, write optimised queries, and maintain data integrity.
* Collaborate closely with product managers, front-end application engineers, and other stakeholders to translate business requirements into functional technical solutions.
* Participate in code reviews, ensuring code quality, performance, and adherence to established coding standards and best practices.
* Identify and resolve technical issues, bugs, and performance bottlenecks within the existing codebase.
* Contribute to the technical design and implementation of new services and system architecture under the guidance of senior engineers.
* Contribute to the continuous improvement of our development processes and tools.
* Stay up-to-date with emerging technologies and actively seek opportunities to apply new knowledge to projects.
* Document technical specifications, designs, and procedures clearly and accurately.
* Play an active role in the technical team, sharing knowledge and contributing to a positive, collaborative team culture.
Required Skills
* 4-6 years of professional experience in backend development, with a strong, recent focus on PHP.
* Solid experience with modern PHP frameworks, especially Symfony.
* Strong understanding of SQL database interaction, query writing, and basic optimization techniques.
* Familiarity with object-oriented programming (OOP) principles and design patterns.
* Experience with RESTful API consumption and development.
* Proficiency with version control systems, especially Git.
* Working knowledge of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and agile (with a small a) methodologies.
* Good problem-solving skills and the ability to troubleshoot technical issues efficiently.
* Strong communication and collaborative skills, with the ability to work effectively within a team.
Desirable Skills
* Familiarity with cloud platforms, especially AWS.
* Basic understanding of front-end technologies (e.g., HTML, CSS, JavaScript).
* Knowledge of other programming languages, especially Python or Node.js.
* Experience with containerization technologies, especially Docker.
* Familiarity with message queues (e.g, AWS SQS, RabbitMQ).
* Experience with continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) practices.
* Participation in developer communities or personal side projects.
Some of the benefits of this role:
* Flexible working hours and style.
* Training and support to develop your skills and career.
* Friendly nurturing environment with a strict no blame only learn culture!
* Transparency internally about company direction/ strategy & tactics across teams.
* Regular team events, lunches, and meetups.
* A central London office with a fully stocked drinks fridge.
* 24 days holiday per year + public holidays.
Unfortunately we are not able to sponsor foreign working visas at this time, so you will need to have the right to work in the UK.