Software developers are among the most crucial and complex roles to hire for.
This is only made more difficult due to the fact there are many different sub-categories of software developers that need to know various coding languages and specific applications in order to be successful in their role.
Hiring for specific roles, like PHP developers, is especially intimidating for recruiters, who may not have in-depth knowledge of the required technical skills and coding languages — which is perhaps what brought you to this article.
Have no fear, we’re here to help. We’ve developed the ultimate guide to writing a PHP developer job description with an overview of the role, five examples of real job descriptions and a customizable template.
Feel free to skip to the section that most interests you. Otherwise, keep on reading.
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Table of Contents
What Does A PHP Developer Do?
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PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), a scripting language specific to web development, is the used to create programs, applications, websites and more. Unlike HTML, where the code is written on the user-side, PHP is written on the server-side. However, PHP can be embedded in HTML, meaning PHP developers should also have a knowledge of HTML.
Developers who work with PHP tend to focus on writing, testing and maintaining code for the back-end of the website, though they also support the front-end in some cases. They create the basic website functions that many of us take for granted, like user log ins, image or file uploads, blogs and forums and e-commerce checkout flows. Their role also incorporates website administration, software testing and user training, to name but a few.
PHP is used by everyone from startups and small businesses to advertising agencies and Fortune 500s due to its broad usability, low cost and efficient development process. Some notable applications built using PHP include Wikipedia, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr MailChimp, iStockPhoto, Business Insider and Yahoo.
There are two primary categories of PHP developers — PHP software developers and PHP web developers. Web developers build user-facing applications, like websites, whereas software developers build software for stand-alone desktop and mobile platforms and applications. For example, a web developer builds a website that is mobile friendly, whereas a software developer builds a mobile app.
PHP developers often have a bachelor’s degree in information science, software engineering or computer science, although many qualified PHP developers went straight to work after secondary school or acquired a developer certification. In general, it’s more common for software developers to obtain a bachelor’s degree than it is for web developers.
As with all developer roles, there are a number of different programs and software associated with their work. While we won’t get into the logistics of each resource, these are a few that are likely to be included in your job description, depending on what your team uses, so check with them first.
Coding Languages
- AJAX, CSS, HTML5, Go, Javascript, jQuery, MySQL, PHP
Frameworks
- Apigility, cakePHP, Codeigniter, Doctrine, Joomla, Kohana, Laravel, Magento, PrestaShop, Symfony, WordPress, Yii, Zend
Operating Systems
- Linux, MAC OS, Microsoft Windows, Solaris, Unix
Web Servers
Version Control Systems
Five PHP Developer Job Description Examples
Now that you understand the basics of the role, let’s take a look at five real examples of PHP developer job descriptions. We gathered these examples from our seven online communities.
You’ll notice that we’ve redacted some information to protect the privacy of the companies that originally posted them, but aside from that we’ve left them unaltered.
After the examples, we’ve provided you with a PHP developer job description template to customize for your needs.
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PHP Developer Job Description: Example 1
We’re looking for truly exceptional PHP engineers who are ready to tackle an endless, important feature list, and do it at intimidating scale. The stuff you’ll work on has a very real impact, and our customers will love you or hate you for what you deliver. What you build matters here.
You should be able to operate without much direction, but be excited to work closely with a team. We want developers who are opinionated about smart ways to build, yet humble enough to listen and take input well. You should want to take ownership of the features you build…you’re shipping to customers, not just completing story points. We’re looking for developers who care deeply about the quality of their code…it impacts your fellow devs, your company, and your customers. QA can and will help, but ultimately, you embrace the fact that the quality of what you ship is your responsibility.
For this particular slot, we need someone who will take on a leadership position—mentoring the team and taking responsibility for pushing forward. We need all that cool stuff above—plus your ability to motivate and hold accountable a talented team.
We have an incredible team, with a brilliant culture. Your friends will be jealous when you tell them about your day at work. What are you waiting for? Send us your resume!
Responsibilities:
- Build and ship clean, performant, scalable, secure, quality software that exceeds customer expectations…own your code, cradle to grave.
- Take a leadership role using your previous leadership experience or the talent and knowledge that’s been waiting for the right opportunity.
- Work with Product, Quality, DevOps and Ops to ensure that we deliver the best possible customer experience.
- Be available as necessary to troubleshoot urgent issues.
- Collaborate closely with local, nearshore and offshore engineering and ops…we’re all one team!
- Adhere to Product and workflow processes, engaging with the team to make continual improvements.
- Be a technical thought-leader among your peers to constantly improve how we work.
- Be approachable and transparent, wear a lot of hats, and always be aware of the big picture of making [redacted] great.
Requirements:
- 5+ Years of proven software development experience in PHP.
- Full stack – back end through front end experience. React JS experience a nice plus.
- Strong knowledge of MySQL.
- Demonstrable knowledge of web technologies including HTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX, etc.
- Experience building RESTful web services.
- Ability (and desire!) to write unit and integration tests.
- Good knowledge of version control tools, and experience collaborating with a large team of developers.
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, or equivalent experience.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, and excellent listening skills.
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PHP Developer Job Description: Example 2
As a Front-End Web Developer you will have an opportunity to [redacted]. The ideal candidate will have experience building interactive web pages, have experience developing websites on a PHP-based CMS, and have experience working with other teams within marketing to deliver on cross-team marketing goals.
While it is critically important to understand the “how” as a front-end developer on the [redacted] team, it is equally important to understand the “why” behind the projects you will be working on. You’re a perfect fit for this role if you are a detail-oriented problem solver, who can work and contribute to the [redacted] team not only as a developer, but as a resource to help provide feedback and insights into how we can help deliver on company wide goals.
What you’ll do:
- Develop, test, and deliver clean, production-ready code
- Ensure technical feasibility of UX/UI designs
- Build abstract modules/widgets for cross site implementation
- Build and maintain a clean and lightweight code repository for all production code
- Be a confident developer, excited by learning new technologies
- Collaborate with project managers, web team members, and other [redacted] stakeholders as required
- Be able to effectively communicate ideas and goals to non-technical stakeholders for any given project
Do you have the right ingredients?
- 3 – 6 years experience in front-end web development
- Proficient understanding of web markup, including HTML5 and CSS3
- Strong familiarity with Craft CMS or another PHP-based CMS
- Strong understanding of web application security principles and best practices
- Strong knowledge of git, and an understanding of code repository best practices
- MySQL experience, with proven ability to write SQL queries
- Proven understanding of task runners/pre-processors such as grunt, gulp, or webpack
- Good understanding of SEO principles and how your code with adhere to them.
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PHP Developer Job Description: Example 3
As a Web Developer at [redacted], you’ll architect and build beautiful user-centered website and intranet experiences with your exceptional front-end and PHP development skills. Your work will serve the millions of users that visit the website every month and have a direct impact on [redacted]. You’ll also have the fortune to work with a small, collaborative, and smart team that works hard and loves keeping up with the latest [redacted].
What You’ll Do
- Live by and champion our cultural values [redacted].
- Craft pixel-perfect, responsive UI using HTML5, CSS3/SASS, and Javascript.
- Architect dynamic pages, templates, post types, and taxonomies to support our website initiatives.
- Work hand-in-hand with our [redacted] team to build and maintain an amazing website and intranet experience for our customers and employees.
- Maintain the highest possible customer experience with cross-browser testing, performance tuning, regular bug fixing and a passion for [redacted].
About You
You are a front-end pro who regards code as poetry and has a passion for creating engaging, precise, and lightning fast experiences. You care about consistency, forward-thinking architecture, security, and building interactions that will delight the user.
- 2+ years experience in [redacted] website development
- You’re adept at creating responsive and interactive web pages using HTML5, CSS3/SASS, Javascript, and PHP.
- You love a good debate on whether to use a plugin, post types, or page templates to build out customized content.
- You are proficient in PHP.
- You’re seasoned enough in the field that you’ve built your own theme or plugin.
- You understand how important performance and security are for [redacted].
- You’re comfortable with Git and enterprise hosting providers like Pantheon to deploy code across dev, test and live environments.
- You’re comfortable integrating content from third party APIs.
- You have an understanding of [redacted].
- You are proficient in sprint planning, estimation, time management, and communicating status.
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PHP Developer Job Description: Example 4
[redacted] engineers are obsessed with delivering delightful customer experiences, value software engineering practices such as testing, and never forget about scalability and reusability when designing code. If you’re interested in tackling big challenges, working hard, and creating success at [redacted], this is the job for you.
What You’ll Do:
- #1 – Grow our company by working on our [redacted] Team, committing to excellence, writing high-quality code, and taking pride in all that you do
- Develop, enhance, and debut RESTful APIs
- Envision, spec, implement, test, document, and maintain software components in the [redacted].
- Act as a lead engineer on various projects, collaborating with members from other teams.
- Find the perfect balance between high quality code and getting a product shipped.
- Help the team pay off technical debt, migrating separate chunks of legacy to a more scalable SOA approach.
What You’ll Bring
- You have at least 2 years experience in software engineering outside of your education.
- Expert level knowledge in PHP, or proven success at quickly learning a new programming language.
- Experience and comfort building [redacted].
- Proven passion for everything you build to be clear and maintainable, in design and implementation.
- Intuition for and experience in designing a highly fault-tolerant architecture of loosely-coupled services.
- Fluency in Java, or a proven success at quickly learning a new programming language.
- Strong individual contributor, self-motivated and a proven team player.
- Experience with Apigility, Doctrine, CakePHP, Zend Framework 2 a plus.
- Ability to learn and adapt in a rapidly changing environment
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PHP Developer Job Description: Example 5
We are looking for a seasoned polyglot engineer that is driven, takes ownership and is solution oriented to join a stellar team working on [redacted] written in Go and PHP [redacted].
The job involves the following responsibilities:
Building robust and scalable software in multiple modern object oriented and functional languages. We’re making [redacted] using Go and Kafka.
- Implement reactive design patterns, microservices, and REST APIs
- Work on integrations with other internal and external teams
- Participate in creating and clarifying [redacted]
- Dive into hard problems and successfully deliver great results on schedule
- Design and implement asynchronous, multi-processor solutions
Who we think would be a fit…
We are looking for someone who not only loves building great software but is also passionate about getting stuff done. You might have worked at large top name companies, but you prefer small nimble companies with tight knit cross-functional teams that focus on getting stellar products to market quickly. You have the skills and experience, but you still love to learn – and you want to work with super talented folks to build great products.
Additionally, you:
- Are a polyglot who enjoys learning new languages and choosing the right language to solve the problems at hand, and are interested in working in Go and PHP.
- Have a track record of projects completed on time – you excel at getting things done.
- Enjoy refactoring code to reduce code complexity, but understand delivery matters more than perfect code
- Think in multi-threaded, asynchronous, and multi-processor solutions.
- Prioritize mitigating security vulnerabilities as a part of your normal development process.
- Are not afraid of Test Driven Development (TDD), in fact, you kinda like it.
- Enjoy heads down coding, but also have good communication skills, love collaborating and are fun to work with.
Basic Qualifications:
- 5 + years professional programming experience
- BS in Computer Science or related fields, or equivalent experience
- Two (2) or more years of experience each, with two or more object oriented or functional languages, OR two (2) or more years of professional experience with Go and PHP.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with Service-oriented architecture (SOA), microservices, and REST APIs
- Familiarity with both SQL and NoSQL technologies such as Redis
- Experience in scaling applications
- Strong computer science theory fundamentals like algorithms and data structure design
- Experience mitigating security vulnerabilities
- Familiarity with performance tuning applications with tools like JMeter or RedLine13
- Experience with Test Driven Development (TDD)
- Experience with Go and PHP
- Experience with Apache Kafka
- Comfortable working on small, cross-functional, fast paced teams
- Excellent communication skills
PHP Developer Job Description Template
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Hopefully these job descriptions give you a better understanding of the responsibilities and requirements for PHP developer candidates. They are, however, written for specific roles tailored to fulfill the unique needs of the individual company.
To help you write a job description that’s specific to your company and covers all the bases for a PHP developer role, we’ve narrowed down a few key responsibilities and requirements.
We’ve compiled these elements into one handy job description template that you can tailor to your specific needs. It would certainly behoove you to request feedback from your development team to ensure your job description includes all the correct coding terms and responsibilities beyond what we’ve provided you.
Again, this is a template. Please customize it to reflect your company, culture and needs.
Company Bio
[Use this section to provide a high level overview of your company, culture, perks and benefits, career development opportunities and anything else that will get candidates excited about your company.]
Job Description
Responsibilities
- Develop, test, integrate and refine website/software/application/program code.
- Create dynamic web pages, including [insert key functions related to your website/software].
- Strong and flexible communication skills with the ability to explain ideas and goals to non-technical team members.
- Ensure high levels of performance and security for company and user information.
- Meet hard and fast deadlines with strong time management skills and frequent communication with the team and company.
- Collaborate with internal teams, including product, devOps, customer success, UX/UI design and senior leaders to optimize performance and customer experience.
- Lead and manage the development team to ensure deadlines are met with quality deliveries.
- Maintain best practices and document processes while staying ahead of web development trends.
Requirements
- X years of software development/web development experience in PHP.
- X years experience in front-end/back-end web development.
- Working knowledge of [insert mandatory coding languages].
- Extensive experience with [insert mandatory frameworks].
- Strong experience working with [insert mandatory operating systems].
- Familiarity with [insert mandatory web servers].
- Bachelor’s degree in information science, software engineering or computer science is preferred, but not required.
- Experience in [insert your industry] is also preferred.
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