Tech hiring Software engineering
Hire PHP developers fluent in modern PHP.
A PHP developer builds and maintains web applications in PHP, most often on Laravel or Symfony, or on a CMS such as WordPress. The language has changed a great deal since version 5. We shortlist developers assessed on typed, tested PHP 8 and on the patience to improve an older codebase without breaking it.
01 The role
What a PHP developer does, and what they ship.
A PHP developer builds the application behind a website or a web product: routes and controllers, the data model, forms and validation, queued jobs, emails, payments and the admin area. On Laravel or Symfony they often build the screens as well, with server-rendered templates or a thin layer of JavaScript on top.
Much of the real work is inherited. PHP runs a large share of the web, and a typical brief involves a codebase that is five or ten years old, a framework a few major versions behind and business logic nobody has written down. Changing that safely, by adding tests around the risky parts, upgrading in steps and replacing raw queries without altering behaviour, takes more skill than starting a new project.
Modern PHP is a strict, typed language with enums, readonly properties and a mature toolchain: Composer, PHPStan or Psalm for static analysis, Pest or PHPUnit for tests, Rector for automated upgrades. A developer who still writes it the way it was written in 2012 is a different hire from one who uses these daily, and the difference shows within a week.
What they ship
- Web applications and SaaS products on Laravel or Symfony
- APIs for mobile apps and JavaScript front ends
- E-commerce: carts, checkout, payment and fulfilment integrations
- Custom WordPress themes, plugins and WooCommerce extensions
- Admin panels and back-office tools, often on Filament or Nova
- Queued jobs, scheduled tasks and notification systems
- Upgrades of ageing PHP applications to supported versions
02 Skills and stack
Skills to look for, in three columns.
“PHP developer” covers a Laravel engineer, a Symfony engineer and a WordPress specialist, who are not interchangeable. Tell us which you need, and which PHP version production runs.
Core
The role cannot be done without these.
- PHP 8: types, enums, attributes, modern OOP
- Laravel or Symfony, in depth
- SQL, MySQL or PostgreSQL, and schema design
- HTTP, sessions, REST APIs
- Web security: injection, XSS, CSRF, authorisation
- Automated testing
- Composer and dependency management
- Reading and refactoring legacy code
Tooling
Varies from team to team.
- Laravel: Eloquent, queues, Horizon, Livewire or Inertia
- Symfony with Doctrine
- PHPUnit or Pest
- PHPStan or Psalm
- Rector, and Pint or PHP-CS-Fixer
- Redis for cache, sessions and queues
- Nginx with PHP-FPM, or FrankenPHP and Octane
- Docker
- WordPress and WooCommerce
- Xdebug
Adjacent
Useful, not required.
- JavaScript, with Vue, React or Alpine
- HTML, CSS and Tailwind
- Linux server administration
- CI/CD and zero-downtime deployment
- Search (Meilisearch, Elasticsearch)
- Payment provider APIs
03 When to hire one
Hire a PHP developer for the right problem, or hire someone else.
Most hiring mistakes are made before the job description is written. Read both lists before you brief us.
Hire a PHP developer when
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Your product already runs on Laravel, Symfony or WordPress
The quickest way to make progress on an existing PHP application is someone who knows its framework’s conventions and does not need to learn them on your time.
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You are stuck on an unsupported PHP or framework version
Security patches have stopped, new packages will not install and the host is threatening to switch the version off. An upgrade is a project with a known shape, for someone who has done one.
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You want a conventional web product built quickly
Accounts, billing, an admin, emails, a queue. Laravel ships most of this and a competent developer can have a first version in front of customers early.
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A WordPress site has grown into an application
Dozens of plugins, custom fields everywhere and a checkout that slows under load. It needs an engineer, not another plugin.
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The agency that built it has moved on
You have the code and the server but nobody who understands either. A developer on your own team takes ownership and documents what is there.
Look elsewhere when
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The interface is a large, highly interactive single-page app
A PHP developer can supply the API. The front end itself deserves someone whose main craft is React.
Hire React developers -
You are starting fresh and the team already works in TypeScript
Adding a second language for the back end splits a small team. Stay with one.
Hire Node.js developers -
The site is slow because of the database, not the code
When the problem is replication, locking or a table with hundreds of millions of rows, bring in a database specialist.
Hire database administrators -
The product is built around data science or machine learning
PHP has little of that ecosystem. Build the service in the language the models live in.
Hire Python developers -
You need a brochure site set up once
A theme, a few pages and a contact form do not justify a permanent hire. Post it as a project.
Post a freelance project
04 How we assess
Four stages, before a PHP developer reaches your shortlist.
A CV says what someone claims. We test what they can do, then send you the evidence with the shortlist.
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Stage 1
Profile review
We look at what kind of PHP the candidate has written and when: framework applications, WordPress work or older procedural code. We read repositories for typed signatures, tests, sensible use of the framework and whether queries are parameterised or concatenated.
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Stage 2
Technical test
A timed test on PHP language features, object-oriented design, SQL and web security fundamentals, with coding exercises and a problem-solving task. Questions on the candidate’s main framework check that they know its conventions, not just its installer.
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Stage 3
Conversation with our team
Our engineers ask the candidate to walk through an application they maintained: how requests, jobs and data fit together, a performance problem they traced, and an upgrade or refactor they carried out. We ask how they change code that has no tests.
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Stage 4
Review and levelling
Reviewers score accuracy, speed, problem-solving, communication and teamwork, then assign a level from our engineering framework. For PHP roles the notes state which framework and PHP versions the person has worked with recently, since years of experience alone say little.
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Then
Your shortlist
Assessed candidates, with notes and scores.
The engine
Evalia
Assessments run on Evalia, the assessment platform we built ourselves. Across the ProDevs network, more than 100,000 assessments have been completed.
The levels we assign are public. Read the engineering framework, or see how a hire runs from brief to offer.
05 Seniority
Three levels. What each one can own.
Levels differ in scope more than in speed. Match the level to how much direction you can give.
Junior
Owns a page, a form or a fix
- Builds routes, controllers, validation and views by following existing patterns
- Writes migrations and simple Eloquent or Doctrine queries correctly
- Escapes output and uses the framework’s protections by default
- Needs guidance on architecture, queues and changes to legacy code
Mid-level
Owns a module, end to end
- Delivers a feature with its jobs, events, tests and migration plan
- Finds N+1 queries and missing indexes before customers do
- Integrates payment and third-party APIs with proper failure handling
- Refactors untested code in small, reversible steps
Senior
Owns the application and its upgrades
- Plans and leads PHP and framework version upgrades across a live product
- Sets structure beyond the framework defaults when the application outgrows them
- Designs caching, queue topology and deployment so releases cause no downtime
- Introduces static analysis and tests to a team that has worked without them
Indicative salary
Backend developers (Node, Python, PHP). Annual, in US dollars, for remote roles with US, UK and EU companies.
- Mid-level
- $28–50k
- Senior
- $50–80k
- Typical US equivalent
- $120–190k
Indicative market ranges as of August 2026, based on ProDevs placement experience and published market data. The exact figure depends on stack, seniority and time-zone requirements. See the full cost breakdown.
06 Interview questions
Questions for PHP developers, and what to listen for.
For your own interviews, after ours. Each question comes with what a strong answer tends to show.
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What happens between a request reaching PHP and the response being sent, in your framework?
A good answer shows: A clear lifecycle: the front controller, bootstrapping, middleware, routing, the controller, the response. They should know that PHP normally starts fresh for each request and what changes under Octane or FrankenPHP worker mode. Reciting MVC is not an answer.
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You inherit a PHP 7 application with no tests. How do you get it to a supported version?
A good answer shows: A sequence: get it running locally, add characterisation tests around the paths that earn money, run static analysis, upgrade dependencies and versions one step at a time, use Rector for the mechanical changes. Proposing a rewrite first is the warning sign.
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Show me how you would find and fix an N+1 query in Eloquent or Doctrine.
A good answer shows: They name how they would see it (a query log, a debug bar, strict lazy-loading mode) and fix it with eager loading or a join. Better candidates know when eager loading becomes its own problem and a dedicated query is cleaner.
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A queued job fails halfway through. What should happen next?
A good answer shows: Retries with backoff, a failed-jobs table someone actually looks at, and a job written so that running it twice does no harm. Listen for transactions and for what they do about emails or charges already sent.
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Which PHP 8 features changed how you write code, and which do you avoid?
A good answer shows: Specifics such as constructor promotion, enums, readonly properties, match and typed properties, with a reason for each. Someone who cannot name any is probably still writing PHP 5 in a PHP 8 file.
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How do you stop SQL injection and cross-site scripting in a PHP application?
A good answer shows: Parameterised queries or the ORM, escaped output by default, and care at the places where the framework’s protection is switched off: raw queries, unescaped template output, user-supplied HTML. They should also separate authentication from authorisation.
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Where do you put business logic once controllers and models get too large?
A good answer shows: A considered view: actions or service classes, form requests, events, perhaps domain modules. They can explain the trade-off against over-engineering a small application. Dogma in either direction is a weaker answer than judgement.
07 Ways to engage
Four ways to bring a PHP developer in.
A permanent hire is the usual route, not the only one. Choose by how long the work lasts and who should employ the person.
- Placement fee, of first-year salary. One-time.
- 10–15%
- Replacement guarantee on direct hires.
- 2 weeks
- To a first shortlist, for most roles.
- 48h
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Direct hire
A permanent employee on your contract and your payroll. One-time placement fee of 10–15% of first-year salary.
Tech hiring -
Dedicated team
A PHP developer inside a team we assemble and run for you: product, design and engineering on your roadmap, for a monthly retainer.
Dedicated teams -
Outsourcing & payroll
A full-time person in a country where you have no legal entity. ProDevs employs and pays them: 20% of salary if we find the person for you, or 5% of salary, capped at $500 a month, for payroll and compliance on someone you have already chosen.
Outsourcing -
Freelance project
A defined piece of work with a clear end. You pay the agreed price per milestone through escrow, plus a 5% client fee. Free to post.
Freelancers
08 Around the role
Who PHP developers depend on, and who depends on them.
In many companies the PHP developer is close to a one-person product team: they own the application, the server it runs on and the conversation with whoever uses the admin panel. In larger teams they supply the API and the back office while front-end specialists own the interface.
- Front-end developer
- Agrees whether screens are server-rendered, Livewire or Inertia components, or a separate app on an API.
- Product designer
- Builds templates from designs and flags where a pattern fights the framework.
- Content and marketing team
- Gives editors a CMS or admin they can use without filing a ticket for every change.
- DevOps engineer
- Coordinates PHP versions, queue workers, scheduled tasks and deployment steps such as migrations.
- QA tester
- Provides seed data and staging environments, and fixes what regression testing finds.
09 Client testimonials
Hear it first-hand, from companies that hired.
Founders, operators and executives describe working with ProDevs, in their own words.
Play video: Client testimonial: Olufemi Seyi, COO, Casafina development company
Play video: Client testimonial: Aproko Doctor, Building AwaDoc
Play video: Client testimonial: JT Liddell, Promenade CEO
10 Questions
Hiring PHP developers, answered.
Something else? Book a call (opens in a new tab) and ask us directly.
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Is PHP still worth hiring for in 2026?
Yes, if your product is on it or your needs are conventional. PHP 8 is a fast, typed language, Laravel and Symfony are actively developed, and WordPress still runs a large part of the web. The honest caveat is that it is a poor choice for machine learning work or for teams already committed to TypeScript throughout.
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What is the difference between a Laravel developer and a WordPress developer?
A Laravel developer builds custom applications on a framework: their own data model, tests, queues and deployment. A WordPress developer works inside a CMS, extending it with themes, plugins and hooks. Some people do both well, but the skills are distinct. Say which you need in the brief so that the shortlist is assessed against it.
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Can a PHP developer upgrade our old application?
A mid-level or senior one can, and it is a common brief. Expect them to start by getting the application running locally and adding tests around the critical paths, then upgrade PHP and the framework in steps. Ask candidates to describe an upgrade they have completed, including what broke along the way.
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Do PHP developers also build the front end?
Often, yes. Laravel developers commonly build interfaces with Blade templates, Livewire, or Inertia with Vue or React, and that covers most business applications well. For a large, highly interactive interface, pair them with a front-end specialist and let the PHP developer concentrate on the API and the data.
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What does a PHP developer in Africa cost?
For remote backend roles with US, UK and EU companies, indicative annual salary ranges are $28,000–$50,000 at mid-level and $50,000–$80,000 at senior level. A direct hire through ProDevs also carries a one-time placement fee of 10–15% of first-year salary, with a two-week replacement guarantee.
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How quickly can we hire a PHP developer?
For most roles you see a first shortlist within 48 hours of agreeing the brief, and most companies find their hire within two to three weeks. For a short, defined piece of work, such as a plugin or a one-off migration, you can post a freelance project and pay per milestone through escrow.
Talk to ProDevs
Tell us about the role.
Tell us the level and the stack. We will tell you how quickly we can put assessed PHP developers in front of you.
Project work
Need it for a project instead?
Not every job needs a full-time hire. Describe the work, get proposals from vetted freelance PHP developers, and pay per milestone through escrow. Free to post.