Principal PHP Developer

Job Role: Principal PHP Software Engineer

Reference: BH-357p

Job Type: Permanent

Location: Fully Remote with in-person meetups every 2 months

Salary: up to £100,000k per annum

About The Client:

Our client is a fast-growing HealthTech company rethinking pharmacy workflows. They replace outdated systems with smart hardware and provide full onboarding and training. Their platform powers operations, integrates with NHS services, and supports robotics.

They’re hiring a Principal PHP Software Engineer to lead engineering, drive improvements, and mentor the team.

Overview:

Our client is looking for a Principal PHP Software Engineer to take a leading role in their engineering team. You’ll be hands-on with their Laravel-based backend, while also guiding architectural decisions, mentoring engineers, and driving technical excellence.

You’ll collaborate closely with company directors (technical and non-technical), support staff, and key partners like NHS England and NHS Digital to deliver mission-critical features, integrate with complex healthcare protocols, and help mature the company’s engineering practices.

Beyond development, you’ll play a vital leadership role, supporting junior team members, championing testing and automation, and introducing robust DevOps and CI/CD processes.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead backend development in our Laravel PHP monolith, owning major projects end-to-end.
• Upgrade and modernise somewhat out of date PHP framework codebases,
• Introducing best practices and modern tooling.
• Mentor and coach junior developers, helping grow the team.
• Advocate for and embed automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, code quality, and robust review processes.
• Work closely with the leadership team to report monthly technical progress, including involvement in NHS stakeholder meetings and cross-functional updates.
• Collaborate with support and installation teams to ensure smooth customer onboarding and operational stability.
• Take ownership of platform stability, patching processes, and software security.
• Design and optimise MySQL (RDS) databases for performance and scale, particularly for data retention and audit logging. MSSQL is involved, and is desirable as they have a small amount of this in play for customer reasons.
• Help drive DevOps maturity: automate deployments, and monitor systems.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to influence product direction and operational strategies.

Company Tech Stack:

• Backend:

• PHP (Laravel)

• APIs (OAuth)

• WebSockets

• Node.js (used in Electron apps)

• Frontend:

• PHP server-side rendering (Laravel Blade), Vue.js, Bootstrap, JavaScript

• Databases:

• MySQL (RDS), MSSQL

• Redis (ElasticCache)

• Heavy data compliance: audit logging, long-term data retention

• Infrastructure & DevOps:

• AWS (EC2, RDS, S3, WAF, ELB, Lambda, CloudFront, SNS, CloudWatch)

• Manual deployments (in transition to CI/CD)

• OpenVPN, DirectConnect, VPC routing (split/full tunnel VPNs)

• Desktop Apps:

• Electron (Node.js backend + Vue.js frontend)

Requirements/experience:

• 7+ years of PHP experience, with Laravel knowledge
• Leadership mindset: ability to mentor others, shape processes, and push back when needed
• Hands-on, sleeves-rolled-up problem solver who enjoys digging into systems and improving them
• Experience upgrading codebases and introducing modern PHP/Laravel practices
• Strong database skills: query optimisation, data modelling, large-scale architecture
• Proven experience embedding automated testing and QA processes in teams
• Comfortable with DevOps, AWS services, and basic networking (DNS, DHCP, VPN, routing)
• Strong communicator who can represent the company in external stakeholder meetings

Additional/Desirable experience:

• NHS integration protocols: FHIR, HL7, CIS2, EPS, RTEC, PDS, DOS, DM+D
• Familiarity with integrating or communicating with robotic automation systems and integrating with physical devices
• Desktop app development with Electron
• CI/CD setup, rollback strategies, and deployment automation
• Sentry, NewRelic, or other observability tooling implementation