Hire PHP Developers

Why hire PHP Developers through us

• Vetted engineers — technical screening and a practical exercise before you see a profile
• You interview and choose; nobody joins without your approval
• Working hours overlap with your team, with clear daily communication
• NDA and full IP assignment to your company
• Monthly terms with a trial period and free replacement if the fit is wrong

Roles and seniority

Skills matrix

Ways to engage

Rates depend on seniority and engagement length. Share your requirements and you will receive a written rate card within one business day. See also staff augmentation and dedicated teams.

What a great PHP developer looks like

A strong modern PHP developer writes typed, object-oriented PHP 8 code, works fluently with Composer and frameworks such as Laravel or Symfony, and follows PSR standards. They take security seriously — preventing SQL injection, cross-site scripting and insecure file handling — and use static analysis and automated tests. Equally important for many businesses, they can work confidently in older codebases, adding tests and refactoring gradually rather than insisting on rewrites.

Questions we ask in technical interviews

Every candidate is assessed on fundamentals and on judgement. Typical topics include:

• How would you upgrade an application from PHP 7.4 to PHP 8.3?
• How do you prevent SQL injection and XSS in a PHP application?
• How would you structure business logic in a large Laravel app?
• How do you profile and fix a slow page?
• How do you introduce tests to legacy code with none?

Typical projects for PHP developers

• Building business applications and portals in Laravel
• Upgrading legacy PHP 5/7 systems to PHP 8
• Creating REST APIs for mobile apps and integrations
• Maintaining and extending Symfony or CodeIgniter applications
• Custom WooCommerce and WordPress development

PHP remains one of the most common back-end languages for business software, so experienced engineers who can modernise older code are especially valuable.

Modern PHP is not the PHP of 2010

PHP still powers a very large share of the web, and the language has changed a great deal. Current PHP versions bring strict types, enums, readonly properties, attributes and a fast engine. Composer, PSR standards and frameworks such as Laravel and Symfony make well-structured applications the norm. When you hire PHP developers, look for people who work this way — not just people who can edit legacy files.

• Uses Composer for dependencies and autoloading
• Writes typed code and follows PSR coding standards
• Tests with PHPUnit or Pest
• Uses static analysis such as PHPStan or Psalm
• Understands security basics: prepared statements, escaping output, CSRF protection

Typical PHP engagements

Upgrading legacy PHP: what to expect

1. Audit

   Inventory PHP version, extensions, dependencies and test coverage.

2. Safety net

   Add tests and monitoring around the most important flows before changing anything.

3. Automated upgrades

   Use tools such as Rector to apply many syntax changes automatically, then review.

4. Step through versions

   Upgrade in stages, fixing deprecations and dependency issues at each step.

5. Harden

   Remove unsafe patterns, update libraries and document the new setup.

For larger rewrites, see legacy software modernization and Laravel developers.

Red flags in PHP candidates

• Builds SQL queries by concatenating user input
• Has never used Composer or a framework
• No experience with any PHP version released in recent years
• Cannot explain how sessions, cookies and authentication work
• No habit of writing tests or using version control branches

A sample PHP developer brief

• Application — what it does, who uses it and how critical it is
• Versions — PHP version, framework and version, database and hosting
• Codebase health — test coverage, known problem areas and documentation
• Work needed — new features, upgrades, performance or security fixes
• Team and timing — who they work with, hours and start date

With this information we can propose developers whose experience matches your framework and the state of your code. A developer who is excellent at greenfield Laravel projects is not automatically the best choice for a fragile legacy application, and vice versa.

Tooling our PHP developers use

Whatever the project, we agree coding standards and review rules with your team in the first week, so new PHP code fits in with what you already have.

Prefer a managed team for a full build? See PHP development services.

For long-running PHP applications, we also recommend a simple upgrade calendar that tracks each PHP and framework version against its end-of-support date, so upgrades are planned rather than urgent.

Onboarding timeline

1. RequestDay 1

   You share the role, skills and start date.

2. ProfilesWithin 48 hours

   Shortlisted candidates with relevant experience.

3. InterviewsDays 3–5

   You interview and select.

4. StartWeek 2

   Access, onboarding and first tasks in your tools.

Prefer a managed project instead of hiring? See our services.

Need a different skill set? See every role on Hire Software Developers.