Mid-Senior Full Stack PHP Developer

Stockford Recruitment is working with an established UK digital business that is expanding its product and engineering function and looking to hire multiple Mid–Senior Full Stack PHP Developers. This is a genuine full-stack role within a small, growing engineering team. You’ll work across everything from database design and application logic through to customer-facing interfaces, infrastructure and production deployment. The business is going through a significant period of technical evolution, combining greenfield development with the ongoing modernisation of an established platform. There is legacy code to improve, technical debt to tackle and plenty of new functionality to build. They’re not looking for someone who simply picks up tickets and writes code. They want experienced engineers who can make good decisions, challenge constructively and bring experience of what good engineering looks like from previous environments. What you’ll be doing Building features end-to-end across backend, database and frontendDeveloping clean, maintainable applications using PHP 8.4 and LaravelWorking with MySQL across queries, indexing and performanceBuilding responsive, accessible customer-facing interfacesWriting and maintaining automated testsTackling technical debt and modernising legacy functionality pragmaticallyContributing to infrastructure, CI/CD and production deploymentsParticipating in code reviews and sharing knowledge across the teamTaking genuine ownership of your work through to production The environment PHP 8.4 | Laravel | MySQL 8 | Alpine.js | Tailwind CSS | Vite | Docker | AWS | Terraform | GitHub Actions | PHPUnit | Playwright | PHPStan | Sentry You don't need experience with every technology above. In particular, Alpine.js, Tailwind, Docker, Terraform and GitHub Actions can be picked up if you have strong transferable experience. What they’re looking for You’ll need commercial Laravel experience and should be comfortable working genuinely full-stack rather than specialising exclusively in backend or frontend development. You should be able to demonstrate strong PHP/Laravel fundamentals, MySQL knowledge, frontend development experience, testing discipline and experience working with an existing/legacy codebase. Just as importantly, they’re looking for someone who can work independently, communicate clearly and make pragmatic engineering decisions. Experience across more than one engineering environment would be particularly valuable. The team meets in person regularly, so you'll need to be comfortable travelling to a Oxford office approximately once per week, with every two weeks the minimum expectation. This is a strong opportunity for a PHP developer who wants ownership, technical variety and genuine influence within a growing engineering function rather than being one developer among dozens. Stockford Recruitment is a specialist Technology & Digital recruitment partner, supporting startups, scaleups and growing businesses across the UK & Ireland. We recruit across Software Engineering, Data & AI, Cloud & Infrastructure, ERP, Go-to-Market and Digital & Performance Marketing, partnering with businesses from early-stage growth through to established technology teams. We’re founder-led, relationship-driven and focused on quality over volume. Every candidate we represent is spoken to directly, properly qualified and matched against the opportunity before being introduced.