Senior PHP (Laravel) Developer

NOTE: This is a full-time, remote, long-term position at a product-based company, accommodating time zones across Europe, Africa, and South/Central/Western Asia.

The Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF) is a leader in UX and UI design education and our reputation is built on high-quality courses and masterclasses that set the bar in the industry. Our goal? To revolutionize the standard for UX learning worldwide. That's why we're on the lookout for a Senior PHP Developer whose skills match the excellence of our educational materials. If you're inspired to take online education to new heights and eager to make a meaningful impact, we're excited to meet you.

Here, you’ll never have to advocate for the importance of investing in code quality—our founder is a coder himself, and our elegant code is the vein that keeps the IxDF healthy and growing. You’ll work on stimulating projects in a healthy, collaborative environment where your ideas and time are valued. You’ll be involved in decision-making processes, which means there are incredible opportunities for you to take initiative and grow here. In fact, it’s encouraged! 

This is a rare opportunity to work exclusively with senior-level PHP devs in a diverse, highly organized, result-driven environment where you can thrive personally and professionally. 

About the Project

Our Dev Team is dedicated to enhancing our primary product: a web application hosting online courses, masterclasses, and community tools. Started in 2013, we've consistently improved code quality, features, and test coverage, achieving nearly zero legacy code or technical debt. How? Through our rigorously refined IxDF UI Kit and JavaScript conventions for the front end, and steadfast IxDF PHP and Laravel conventions for the back end. Our CI is highly automated with tools like Psalm (max level), PHPStan (max level), Rector, PHPCS, PHP-CS-Fixer, Deptrac, phpcpd, ESLint, etc.

The Stack You Will Work On

#UseThePlatform. We use modern web standards and APIs available in evergreen browsers to achieve the best performance without the need to upgrade to a new framework every few years. Our key technologies include:

• Always the latest PHP and Laravel versions

• Well-organized medium-size Laravel project divided into 30+modules

• Laravel ecosystem: Horizon, Nova, Scout, Pennant, Octane

• Vanilla JavaScript (incl. Web Components) and Vue.js for Laravel Nova

• Server: Docker, nginx

• DBs: MySQL, Redis

• Testing: PHPUnit, Laravel Dusk, cypress.io

• Advanced CI/CD: GitHub actions + Deployer, enabling multiple daily zero-downtime deployments.

• Stripe, PayPal, Amazon Pay, Twilio, MailerLite, GitHub and other integrations.

• Cloud: Amazon S3, CloudFront

What You Will Be Doing

You'll collaborate with senior developers, UI/UX designers, content and product leads, and our founders. Your main responsibilities will be to:

• Contribute to the development of the back-end for interaction-design.org, encompassing new features, occasional refactorings, and infrequent bug fixes.

• Write maintainable and clean back-end code, including our open-source packages.

• Engage with cross-functional teams to refine specifications for new features and enhancements.

• Maintain up-to-date documentation for all developed and modified code (MD + mermaid.js).

• Consistently expand test coverage using PHPUnit and cypress.io, with a preference for TDD.

• Proactively engage in refactoring processes to reduce technical debt, aiming for an optimal developer experience.

• Review peers' code submissions, utilizing PR reviews as a knowledge-sharing and problem-solving tool.

• Participate in planning, stand-up, and workshop video calls, enjoying 3 meeting-free days weekly for focused work.

• Frequently deploy your code with multiple daily releases (incrementally ship features using feature-flags).

About you

• You possess expert knowledge in PHP and frameworks like Laravel or Symfony.

• Your professional experience with OOP spans over 6 years, grounded in a robust understanding of computer science fundamentals, from data structures to design patterns.

• You are an engineer, not a frameworker. You embody an engineer's mindset, always curious about the mechanics behind the scenes.

• You are enthusiastic about learning by doing and are committed to putting in the effort to continuously improve your skills.

• You speak and write acceptable English – not perfect English, just acceptable – since you will be working with people from all around the world.

• You value teamwork and prioritize collaboration, focusing on collective goals and harmony in the workplace.

• You are self-motivated and self-disciplined and thus work well in a flat hierarchy with lots of freedom.

• You love to have creative freedom, make independent judgments, and live up to the responsibility that comes with that freedom.

• You are driven by the desire to make a positive impact in the world and to meaningfully improve the lives of others.

• You get bonus points…

  • if you have expertise in TDD, DDD, Event Sourcing, and CQRS.

  • if you hold a Master’s Degree in Computer Science.

  • If you possess strong skills in database management, including scaling and optimization.

  • if you have experience with Vue 3 and/or Angular

  • if you have experience building mobile apps.

  • if you have experience with technologies such as Stripe, Swoole, Customer Data Platforms, or Analytics tools.

  • if you have contributed to open-source projects (you will join a team of Laravel/framework contributors)

What we can offer

• A founder and CEO who is also a developer, understanding your challenges and triumphs.

• A zero-effort development environment based on Docker, streamlining your workflow.

• The opportunity to refine and develop battle-tested guidelines for JS and CSS.

• Access to a comprehensive library of books and courses, ensuring your skills and knowledge remain at the forefront.

• A full-time position, within a fully remote organization. Daily video-based contact with your colleagues from elsewhere on the planet, and you’ll get to meet them on team trips 1–2 times per year. 

• Forget fluffy titles, political agendas and corporate drama. Your colleagues value your character, work ethic, and what you actually achieve. Junior or senior, if you embody old-school virtues of always striving to become the best version of yourself, you'll thrive at the IxDF. 

• Work with a highly scalable impact-driven model where we’ve consistently created more than 50% growth year-on-year since 2013. Bootstrapped with zero investment capital but built purely on consistency over time and the conviction that affordable design education can improve the quality of life of humankind.

• Work in a company where the distance between idea and execution is minimal. We’re a highly agile organization with zero bureaucracy or corporate politics – but with a high level of orderliness and efficiency. 

• Have the chance to feel the impact of helping an ever-growing design education brand empower and enrich the lives of millions of people. 

• Work in a company culture where idealism meets high performance and excellence. To help us improve the world (and yourself in the process), you’ll need grit, work ethic, long-term thinking, and self-discipline. 

• Work with people who have a hands-on attitude and a bias towards action as opposed to fluff-filled, unrealistic strategies. You’ll need crisp execution skills yourself and the ability to impress your colleagues with concrete results, just like they’ll impress you.