Senior Full-Stack PHP Developer

Handyman Interactive; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 600,000 - 900,000; Full time

Job summary

Handyman Interactive is seeking a Senior Full-Stack PHP Developer to join a fast-moving applications team. You will work on a customer-facing PHP/Symfony application and its APIs, with React/TypeScript frontend work and data reporting features.

The role involves building and integrating features across the stack, with a focus on secure coding, modern API design, and delivering in a fully remote setting with UK overlap where required.

Qualifications

• Strong commercial PHP experience, ideally with Symfony or a modern PHP framework.
• Proven REST API design and integration experience with third-party services.
• Solid SQL skills, ORM usage, and MySQL experience a plus; Postgres welcome.
• Experience with AWS-hosted applications and CI/CD pipelines.
• Frontend capability in TypeScript/JavaScript to contribute across stack.
• Emphasis on secure coding and clean, well-documented code.

Responsibilities

• Build and improve customer-facing features across a large PHP/Symfony app.
• Develop UI components in React/TypeScript for the frontend.
• Expose data and reporting via portal pages, reports, and APIs.
• Integrate third-party services via APIs/SDKs and maintain clean layers.
• Extend PHP API to support new platform features across stack.
• Deliver full-stack work across backend and frontend as backlog requires.

Skills

PHP

Symfony

REST APIs

SQL

TypeScript

JavaScript

CI/CD

Unit testing

AWS

Tools

Docker

Job description

Senior Full-Stack PHP Developer

Contract | Remote (South Africa) | Full-Time Hours

About the Role

We're looking for a Senior Full-Stack PHP Developer to join one of our clients in a fast-moving applications team during an exciting period of platform growth and delivery. You'll work across a customer-facing web platform and its APIs, building new features, integrating third-party services, and surfacing new data and reporting experiences for end users.

This is a full-stack role and you'll be embedded directly into our client's team, joining daily standups, working within established processes and tooling, and picking up work across the backlog, from backend PHP/Symfony development through to React/TypeScript UI work. We're looking for experienced professionals who can get up to speed quickly and start delivering with minimal ramp-up time.

What You'll Be Working On

• Building and improving customer-facing features across a large, established PHP/Symfony web application backed by MySQL
• Developing new UI components and views in React/TypeScript
• Exposing new data and reporting through portal pages, reporting views, and API layers
• Integrating third-party services via their APIs and SDKs, and maintaining clean abstraction layers
• Enhancing and extending the existing PHP API layer to support new platform features
• Full-stack delivery across backend and frontend, picking up whatever the backlog needs

The Tech Stack

Backend

• PHP with Symfony, clean code architecture, not just framework familiarity
• Doctrine ORM
• MySQL (production and read replicas)
• AWS-hosted, served via Apache

Frontend

• React built in TypeScript
• JavaScript and CSS; some legacy Vue

Testing

• PHPUnit for unit testing
• Playwright for UI/E2E testing

What We're Looking For

• Strong commercial PHP experience, ideally with Symfony or a comparable modern PHP framework, with a solid grasp of clean API design and architecture
• Solid SQL skills: writing and optimising queries against large datasets, comfortable working with an ORM. MySQL experience is a plus; strong Postgres experience is also acceptable
• Proven experience building and consuming REST APIs, including third-party integrations
• Comfortable working on AWS-hosted applications
• Frontend competence in TypeScript/JavaScript sufficient to contribute across the full stack
• Strong engineering discipline, version control, unit testing, code review and clear written communication for a remote embedded team
• Secure coding awareness: you should write to a standard that passes automated static analysis and secrets scanning as part of the CI/CD pipeline

Nice to Have

• React experience - strongly valued; without it, the focus would be on PHP/Symfony, API, and legacy portal work
• React Native awareness - some work feeds from a driver-facing mobile app
• Exposure to telematics, IoT, or high-volume data platforms
• Experience modernising or re-platforming legacy applications
• Familiarity with agentic coding tools such as Cursor or Claude Code
• Docker - working familiarity expected at senior level
• Python - not needed for this engagement but a longer-term plus

Ways of Working

This is a fully remote engagement but requires guaranteed overlap with UK business hours for daily standups and team collaboration. You'll be embedded directly in the team, this is not a hand-off or black-box delivery model. We value pragmatic, delivery-focused engineers who are comfortable in large established codebases and focused on shipping.