Summary
A scaling connectivity platform essential to partner businesses is hiring a Senior PHP Developer to lead and grow an engineering team. You will ship features on a live Laravel/Nova platform, mentor an existing developer, and hire additional engineers while owning technical decisions on architecture, scalability, and reliability. Modern stack includes Livewire, Pest, and Tailwind. Dutch fluency is required.
Highlights
Player-coach role balancing hands-on coding with team leadership, opportunity to hire and build your own engineering team, independent and profitable company with no VC pressure, genuine influence over architecture and culture from day one, modern Laravel stack.
Description
Senior PHP (Laravel) Developer
📍 The Hague (hybrid) | Up to €87,000 per annum + benefits
🛠️ Laravel | Nova | Livewire | Pest | Tailwind |
A scaling connectivity platform that's quietly become essential infrastructure for partner businesses across the Netherlands is hiring a senior developer who wants to build and lead a team.
The portal is live, battle-tested, and processing real work every single day.
Now it's entering its most interesting phase - going from "it works" to "it scales properly", with a real engineering team built around it.
You'll lead that work end to end.
🚀 Player-coach role - still shipping code, still setting the direction
👥 Lead a medior developer already in the team, then hire 3-4 more engineers over the next year
💪 Independent and profitable, no VC pressure - build a team without investor noise
📈 Genuine influence over architecture, hiring, processes, and culture from day one
🛠️ Modern Laravel stack done properly - Nova, Livewire, Pest, Tailwind, the lot
What you'll be doing
🔧 Ship features alongside the team on a live Laravel/Nova platform hundreds of partners rely on
👥 Manage and mentor an existing medior developer
🎯 Hire 3-4 strong engineers into the team over the next 12+ months
🚦 Own technical decisions across architecture, performance, scalability, and reliability
🛡️ Set the bar on engineering quality, code reviews, and team rituals as the team grows
You'll love this if...
✅ 5+ years shipping serious PHP (Laravel)
✅ Experience leading or mentoring other engineers
✅ You speak Dutch (it's the working language of the team)
✅ You want a player-coach role - building as much as leading, not pure management
This one's run by Built Different - founder-led recruitment for the best startups across the Netherlands and Europe.
Sound like your thing? Apply or DM me.
Because great teams are Built Different!
