Principal Engineer - PHP Developer

At PerchPeek we dream of a borderless world where people have the freedom to live and work where they please. Where ideas and resources flow where they’re most needed unrestricted by national borders. We strive to create a world of opportunity for anyone, anywhere – one move at a time.

Relocating can be overwhelming—immigration hoops, tax implications, housing, shipping, utilities, banking…the list goes on. PerchPeek was conceived to change that. We’re building a streamlined Mobility ecosystem to empower businesses and individuals to move anywhere in the world. We support employers and employees through every stage of the relocation process, providing an affordable, scalable, high-value service, powered by technology and relocation expertise.

About the Role

We are looking for a Principal Engineer - PHP Developer with deep expertise in Laravel. You won’t just be shipping code—you’ll be defining the technical strategy that scales our app API. In this role, you will own the quality, scalability, and security of the app API, remove technical bottlenecks, solve complex engineering problems, elevate the team’s output, improve PR standards, and balance tech-debt with speed of delivery. Ideally, you are a backend authority who also has pragmatic full-stack skills (especially ReactJS) to unblock features and drive delivery end-to-end.

Role Responsibilities

• Architect high-performance, scalable APIs that serve as the backbone of our platform.

• Make high-stakes decisions on scalability, maintainability, data modeling, and performance.

• Elevate the engineering team by setting high standards and conducting rigorous PR reviews.

• Make smart trade-offs between “perfect code” and speed to market, understanding engineering as a lever for business growth.

• Champion reliability and observability. You build it, you run it—ensuring systems are debuggable, resilient, and performant in production.

• Ship complex, high-value features end-to-end, leading from the front and unblocking the team on the hardest technical challenges.

About You

• Extensive commercial experience (8–12 years) designing and building mission-critical SaaS platforms using Modern PHP & Laravel.

• Practical experience implementing Domain-Driven Design.

• Sufficient experience with ReactJS and TypeScript to handle full-stack features and unblock frontend challenges.

• Deep experience with modern testing frameworks, CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions), and maintaining production-ready code standards.

• Ability to prioritise business value and move rapidly over perfection.

• Strong communication skills to explain complex technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders.

Bonus Skills:

• Thrive in ambiguity and drive projects forward autonomously in fast-paced environments.

• Deep familiarity with AWS services beyond EC2 & RDS.

• Experience tuning complex SQL queries.

• Handling large datasets in different formats.

Pay & Benefits

Salary
Compensation packages are based on skill set, years and depth of relevant experience, location, and role-dependent factors. Details will be discussed during the interview process.

The Perch Perks

• Work from Anywhere – fully distributed & remote company, with allowance for your working environment.

• Flexible Holiday and Leave – statutory holiday plus wellbeing leave and flexible annual leave.

• Company share options – own a piece of PerchPeek.

• Learning & Development Budget – proactive learning outside your core role.

• Annual Onsite – yearly team gathering in exciting locations (past trips: Tenerife, Barcelona, Marrakech).

Interview Stages

• HR Screen (25–30 mins): Chat with Penny (Head of People) about your background and expectations.

• Technical Challenge (Take-home): Concise coding exercise focusing on clean architecture and modern Laravel practices.

• Collaborative Technical Workshop (90 mins): Real-world working session with engineers, solving problems based on your submission.

• Engineering Excellence Interview (45 mins): Deep-dive technical interview with Ace (Technical Co-founder) on system design and architecture.

• Culture & Alignment Interview (45 mins): Final conversation with Paul (CEO) and Hellie (COO) to ensure values alignment.

Ready to be a Perchy?

No cover letter needed—just share your resume and responses to the application questions. We’re excited to hear from you!