Senior Software Engineer

Trilogy Care Pty Ltd; City of Brisbane; Hybrid; AUD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Trilogy Care Pty Ltd in Brisbane is hiring a senior engineer to join one of our squads. The role is anchored in backend development, though you'll work alongside the frontend layer.

You'll own complex features end-to-end in a regulated environment where getting it right matters. We run a modular monolith with dozens of domain modules that manages aged care funding for thousands of older Australians—care plans, budgets, claiming from Services Australia, supplier management, incident reporting,

Qualifications

• Deep production experience with PHP and a server-side MVC framework.
• Experience designing within domain-driven or modular architectures.
• REST API design and integration.
• Database design and performance for MySQL/PostgreSQL.
• Automated testing with Pest/PHPUnit/RSpec.
• AI-assisted development using Claude Code or similar.
• Mentoring and knowledge sharing within squads.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end features in a modular monolith in a regulated environment.
• Collaborate with BAs and stakeholders to understand needs.
• Design architectural decisions and ADRs.
• Write automated tests and participate in code reviews.
• Lead by example and mentor junior engineers.
• Ship features with CI/CD and monitoring.

Skills

PHP

Laravel

MVC framework

REST API design

Domain-driven architecture

AI-assisted development

Code reviews

Testing frameworks

Rails/Django familiarity

Tools

Laravel

Vue.js

Inertia.js

MySQL

Aurora

Redis

Typesense

Horizon

Pennant

Job description

Trilogy Care uses technology to give carers more time to care. We manage aged care services for thousands of older Australians, connecting them with the right support, funded by the government, coordinated through our platform. We're growing, we're hiring, and the work is meaningful.

We're hiring a senior engineer to join one of our squads. The role is anchored in backend development, though you'll work alongside the frontend layer. You'll own complex features end-to-end in a regulated environment where getting it right matters.

We run a modular monolith with dozens of domain modules that manages aged care funding for thousands of older Australians — care plans, budgets, claiming from Services Australia, supplier management, incident reporting, compliance. The code you write directly affects whether people get the care they're funded for.

The platform runs on Laravel 13 / PHP 8.4. If that's your home turf, great. If you're coming from another modern MVC framework, the important aspects are convention-over-configuration, migrations, queues, jobs. Strong PHP software engineers ramp up on Laravel quickly, and with our AI-assisted workflow the learning curve compresses further.

We practice a full AI SDLC. Claude Code is how we build — not an experiment, not optional. If you've been waiting for a team that takes AI-assisted development seriously, this is that team

What you'd actually work on

Trilogy Care's portal is the system of record for aged care service delivery. It handles:

• Claiming and funding — integration with Services Australia and PRODA to claim government funding on behalf of care recipients
• Budget management — tracking approved budgets, utilisation, contributions and forecast spend across multiple funding streams
• Care plans and packages — the full lifecycle from onboarding a care recipient through to ongoing service delivery
• Supplier and billing — managing providers, processing bills, reconciling payments
• Compliance and incidents — SIRS reporting, risk management, audit trails

The application is a modular monolith — dozens of domain modules, built on the Actions pattern, running PHP 8.4, Laravel 13, Inertia.js bridging to Vue 3, with MySQL (Aurora), Redis, Typesense, Horizon and Pennant. If you know Rails, the architectural parallels are direct: Actions are the equivalent of Service Objects, domain modules map to Rails Engines, Eloquent is ActiveRecord, Horizon is Sidekiq, Pest is RSpec.

You'd join a squad of 5-6 engineers with a senior team lead and a principal engineer. Squads own their projects and operate with genuine autonomy — fortnightly sprints, trunk-based development, dated release branches

What we expect from a senior

This isn't a role where you receive a Jira ticket with acceptance criteria and implement it. Our seniors own the solution:

• Understand the problem — work with BAs and stakeholders to understand what's actually needed, not just what's specified
• Design the approach — contribute to architectural decisions, write ADRs, consider domain boundaries and cross-module implications
• Build it with AI — use Claude Code as a core part of your daily workflow, not as an occasional shortcut
• Ship it — automated tests (Pest), code review, production deployment, monitoring
• Raise the bar — substantive code reviews, pairing with junior engineers, setting the technical standard for the squad

You're the squad's technical anchor. The team lead runs the team; you lead by example

What you need: Non-negotiable:

• Deep production experience with PHP and a server-side MVC framework — Laravel, Symfony, Ruby on Rails, Django or similar. You've worked in the framework's conventions for years, not just used it on one project. You understand the ORM, the job/queue system, the migration lifecycle, the CLI tooling and the testing ecosystem at depth.
• Experience designing and building within domain-driven or modular architectures — you think in boundaries, not just endpoints. Whether you call them Actions, Service Objects, domain modules or Rails Engines, you've structured a non-trivial application beyond basic MVC.
• REST API design and integration — our mobile app and external systems depend on well-designed, well-documented APIs
• Database design and performance — relational databases at scale (MySQL, PostgreSQL), migrations in production, data integrity in a system that handles financial transactions
• Automated testing — you write tests because they make you faster, not because someone told you to. Pest, PHPUnit, RSpec, Minitest — the tool matters less than the habit.
• AI-assisted development as a daily practice — Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot or similar. You should already be working this way. We're not looking for someone who's "open to trying AI tools."
• Mentoring instinct — you improve the people around you through code review, pairing and knowledge sharing. Not as a chore — as part of how you work.

Strongly valued:

• Production experience with Laravel specifically — you'd be productive in the codebase from week one

Also valuable:

• Experience in healthcare, aged care, government or other regulated environments
• Exposure to Vue.js, TypeScript or Inertia.js
• AWS experience (Aurora, ElastiCache, ECS, Lambda)
• Docker/Herd, CI/CD pipelines, GitHub Actions
• Familiarity with WCAG 2.2 and accessibility practices

How the role evolves:

We're explicit about where this is heading:

• Now — AI-assisted. You use Claude Code, agent tools and AI-assisted workflows daily for coding, debugging, testing and documentation. You're faster and more capable because of these tools.
• Next — AI-augmented. Agents produce first-draft implementations. You own architecture decisions and validate quality — reviewing agent-generated code the way you'd review a junior's PR, but at much higher volume.
• Then — architect. The role evolves toward system design, quality governance and the complex problem-solving that agents can't handle independently. The engineers who grow into this are the ones who understand domains deeply enough to know when the AI is wrong.

This isn't a vague promise. It's our published career framework and it's already underway.

Why this role, at this company

• The work matters. This isn't a SaaS product looking for product-market fit. Trilogy Care manages real funding for real people. When you ship a feature, it affects whether an older Australian gets the care they need.
• The architecture is interesting. A modular monolith with dozens of domain modules, integrating with government systems, processing financial transactions in a regulated environment. If you've been building CRUD apps and want something with more substance, this is it. And if you're a Rails developer who's been curious about Laravel — this is a team that will support that transition, not leave you to figure it out alone.
• AI is real here, not a slide deck. We don't have an "AI strategy" — we have an AI way of working. Claude Code is in every developer's hands, every day. The team lead who'd interview you in round two built their workflow around it.
• The team is small enough to matter. ~20 engineers across three squads. Your decisions, your code reviews, your mentoring visibly shapes how the team works. You're not a number.
• Autonomy is genuine. Squads own their projects. You'll be trusted to make technical decisions, push back on requirements that don't make sense, and ship when the work is ready.

Additional Information

• Location: Bowen Hills, Brisbane. Hybrid — primarily office-based with flexibility.
• Salary: Competitive, commensurate with experience.
• Work rights: You must have the right to work in Australia. Pre-employment checks include a National Police Check, international police check where applicable, and the Aged Care Banning Orders register.

The process

• This application — we review your experience against what's above
• Phone screen — 20 minutes with our recruitment team
• First interview — 1 hour with the Head of Product Development. Cultural fit, systems thinking, how you work.
• Technical interview — 1 hour with the squad's senior engineers. Not a whiteboard exercise — a conversation about how you approach real problems.
• Reference checks and offer — we move quickly