SENIOR PHP DEVELOPER

TaxTim Human Robot Pty Ltd; Cape Town; Hybrid; ZAR 558,000 - 893,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Macbooks provided

Skillshare + LLM access

All software licenses

Cape Town office with mountain view

Hybrid schedule 3 office days / 2 home

Job summary

TaxTim is seeking a Senior PHP developer to architect, develop and maintain internal and client-facing features, leveraging Symfony/Laravel and REST/SOAP APIs. Based in Cape Town, you will work in our semi-remote hybrid setup.

You should have 5+ years PHP, experience with MySQL/PostgreSQL, and a collaborative open source mindset. We offer Macbooks, Skillshare access, full software licenses, and a mountain-view office.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or related field (equivalent experience considered).
• 5+ years practical PHP experience with OOP; Wordpress does not count.
• 5+ years MySQL/PostgreSQL experience.
• PHP MVC framework experience (Symfony or Laravel).
• 3+ years Git experience; Unix-based OS comfort (Ubuntu/Mac).
• Strong problem solver with collaborative/open source mindset.
• Fluent in English (written and verbal).

Responsibilities

• Architect, develop and maintain internal and client-facing functionality end-to-end.
• Write clean, efficient, reusable code using SOLID, DRY and KISS principles.
• Monitor, test, and upgrade existing functionality.
• Contribute ideas to improve the system and reach goals.
• Refactor legacy code to Symfony/ReactJS based system.
• Maintain and improve an AWS production environment.
• Create and consume REST and SOAP APIs.

Skills

PHP

MySQL

PostgreSQL

Git

Unix

English

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering

Tools

Symfony

Laravel

Git

Ubuntu Linux

Mac OS

Job description

17 Days Remaining of Tax Season 2026! Click here to file your tax return with TaxTim now.

We're doing the impossible by making tax easy with clever code. Up for the challenge?

Senior PHP developer

We're doing the impossible by making tax easy with clever code. Up for the challenge?

What is TaxTim?

TaxTim is a friendly, all-digital tax robot, making tax easy for millions of South Africans. Operating much like a simple WhatsApp chat, TaxTim contains the brains of several tax experts rolled into one, and helps people to do their own tax returns quickly, easily and with confidence.

What we're proud of:

• Started in 2011 with seed funding from Google


• Integrated with SARS eFiling


• Have helped over 14 million South Africans to date


• Partnerships with Momentum, Sanlam, Old Mutual, PwC, FNB, Airbnb


• Driving profits for some of the biggest insurance companies


• Consistent ease-of-use rating above 9/10

Perks of the job:

• We'll assist you in procuring a workhorse - we like Apple Macbooks and Dell XPSs


• Your very own Skillshare account and LLM subscription, to feed your hungry mind


• All the software licenses you could possible need


• Create miracles that people love you for by Making Tax Easy


• You estimate, schedule and own your projects


• Work in beautiful Cape Town, in our shared office space with a mountain view


• Small team = great start-up experience and anti-big corporate feel


• Our semi-remote hybrid working model strikes a great work/life balance (3 office days, 2 home focus days)

Cool projects ahead:

• Upgrading Tim to a multimodal agentic AI tax assistant


• Migrating our PHP codebase into a RESTful Symfony API


• Migrating our front-end into a ReactJS SPA


• Turning our whole service into an API for use by anyone (OpenAPI Spec)


• Using machine-learning to help our customers faster

Requirements:

• A Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field (Equivalent experience may also be considered)


• Strong knowledge of PHP (5+ years practical OOP experience, Wordpress doesn't count)


• Strong knowledge of MySQL / Postgres (5+ years practical experience)


• PHP MVC framework experience (3+ years practical experience using Symfony, or Laravel works too)


• Competent with source control (3+ years practical experience using Git)


• Comfortable working in a Unix-based OS (we like Ubuntu Linux and Mac OS)


• A creative problem solver, that's willing to explore, with a collaborative open source type mindset


• Self-directed and self-motivated, able to up-skill and learn new technologies without supervision


• Fluent in English (written and verbal)

Responsibilities:

• Architect, develop and maintain both internal and client-facing functionality, from inception through to deployment, full life cycle


• Write clean, efficient and reusable code, utilizing best practices such as SOLID, DRY and KISS


• Monitor, test, improve and upgrade existing functionality


• Contribute ideas on how to improve the system and achieve our goals


• Assist with refactoring legacy code into a new Symfony / ReactJS based system


• Assist with maintaining and improving an AWS based production environment


• Create and consume APIs (both REST and SOAP)

Salary range: R50 - 80k (based on skill and experience)

See www.taxtim.com for more information.