AKA: Mid-Level Full-Stack Developer (PHP / WordPress)

AKA UK; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 50,000 - 75,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

25 days holiday

Telus Health EAP for you and family

Holiday Buy Back

Friends & Family Theatre Ticket

New Business Incentives

Recruitment Incentives

Pension Scheme

Interest Free Travel Loan

Ride to Work Scheme

Childcare Vouchers

Death in Service

Flexible/Hybrid Working

Critical Illness

Enhanced Parental Leave

Job summary

AKA is a global entertainment agency seeking a hands-on full-stack developer with a back-end bias to join the Digital department. You’ll ship websites, web apps and emails, collaborate with designers, and help maintain cloud Linux infrastructure.

The role offers growth towards seniority, opportunities to work across campaigns, and a hybrid working model with exposure to major cultural institutions worldwide.

Qualifications

• Solid object-oriented PHP (8.x) knowledge.
• Strong WordPress experience with custom themes and plugins.
• Experience with at least one MVC framework (Laravel or Symfony).
• Ability to consume and build REST APIs.
• Maintain Linux web servers (nginx/Apache, php-fpm, MySQL).
• Confident with HTML, modern CSS and JavaScript (ES6+).
• Git proficiency including branching and code review workflows.
• Comfortable using design assets from Figma.

Responsibilities

• Build, deploy and maintain websites and web applications (front-end and back-end).
• Maintain and improve cloud Linux infrastructure.
• Support front-end developers with local environments and tooling.
• Keep CI/CD pipelines healthy and up to date.
• Collaborate with designers to validate feasibility of designs.
• Produce development estimates for back-end work.
• Build HTML marketing emails when required.
• Meet stakeholders to scope requirements and report progress.
• Train clients on built sites when needed.

Skills

PHP

WordPress

MVC framework

REST APIs

Linux servers

HTML/CSS/JS

Git

Figma assets

Tools

Docker

Vite

webpack

GitHub Actions

AWS

PHPUnit

Playwright

Job description

About AKA

AKA is a global entertainment agency working primarily with theatre, alongside museums, attractions, visitor destinations and live entertainment more broadly.

About The Team

You would join the Digital department, a team of over 60 people across Digital Media, Digital Product Development, and Data & Insights. The Digital Product Development team pairs designers with developers to ship websites, web apps, campaign builds and emails for some of the best known shows and cultural institutions in the world.

The role

You will sit in the development team, working across the full stack with a back-end bias. This is a hands-on delivery role with room to grow towards senior. You will be trusted with your own projects early, with support from senior developers and the Lead Designer on the product side.

• Build, deploy and maintain websites and web applications, front-end and back-end.
• Maintain and improve our cloud Linux infrastructure.
• Support front-end developers with local environments and tooling.
• Keep our development and deployment processes healthy, including CI/CD pipelines.
• Work with designers to pressure-test whether designs are feasible, and propose alternatives where they are not.
• Produce development estimates for back-end work.
• Build HTML marketing emails on occasion.
• Meet internal stakeholders to scope requirements and report progress.
• Train clients on the sites you have built, on occasion.

About AKA

AKA is a global entertainment agency working primarily with theatre, alongside museums, attractions, visitor destinations and live entertainment more broadly.

About The Team

You would join the Digital department, a team of over 60 people across Digital Media, Digital Product Development, and Data & Insights. The Digital Product Development team pairs designers with developers to ship websites, web apps, campaign builds and emails for some of the best known shows and cultural institutions in the world.

The role

You will sit in the development team, working across the full stack with a back-end bias. This is a hands-on delivery role with room to grow towards senior. You will be trusted with your own projects early, with support from senior developers and the Lead Designer on the product side.

What You Will Do

• Build, deploy and maintain websites and web applications, front-end and back-end.
• Maintain and improve our cloud Linux infrastructure.
• Support front-end developers with local environments and tooling.
• Keep our development and deployment processes healthy, including CI/CD pipelines.
• Work with designers to pressure-test whether designs are feasible, and propose alternatives where they are not.
• Produce development estimates for back-end work.
• Build HTML marketing emails on occasion.
• Meet internal stakeholders to scope requirements and report progress.
• Train clients on the sites you have built, on occasion.

What we are looking for

Essential

• Solid object-oriented PHP (8.x).
• Strong WordPress experience, including custom theme and plugin development.
• Experience with at least one MVC framework (Laravel, Symfony).
• Consuming and building REST APIs.
• Ability to maintain Linux web servers (nginx or Apache, php-fpm, MySQL).
• Confident with HTML, modern CSS and JavaScript (ES6+).
• Git, including branching and code review workflow.
• Comfortable working from Figma files and extracting assets.

Useful

• TypeScript and React or Next.js. A growing share of our product work is built this way and there is scope to move further in that direction.
• Docker or another containerised local development setup.
• Modern build tooling (Vite, webpack).
• A CSS framework such as Tailwind, or a preprocessor such as Sass.
• CI/CD with GitHub Actions or similar.
• Cloud platform experience (AWS, Cloudflare).
• Automated testing (PHPUnit, Playwright).
• Accessibility standards (WCAG 2.2 AA). Much of our client base has a legal and moral obligation here, so it matters to us.

How you work

We care as much about approach as about stack. We are looking for someone who digs into problems rather than waiting to be handed a solution, communicates clearly with non-technical colleagues, works well to campaign deadlines, and wants to be a senior developer in a few years.

Benefits

• 25 days holiday
• ‘Telus Health’ EAP scheme for you and your family. Giving you access to free independent advice on Life, Health, Family, Money and Work matters
• Holiday Buy Back
• Friends & Family Theatre Ticket
• New Business Incentives
• Recruitment Incentives
• Pension Scheme*
• Interest Free Travel Loan*
• Ride to Work Scheme*
• Childcare Vouchers*
• Death in Service
• Flexible/Hybrid Working
• Critical Illness
• Enhanced Parental Leave