Senior PHP Engineer – Symfony / Laravel

You join a service-oriented engineering team responsible for building, running, and continuously improving a set of business-critical applications. These applications are built primarily on PHP (Symfony / Laravel) and are operated within a mature DevOps setup.

This is not a purely delivery-driven role. You work across development, integration, and operations, with a strong focus on code quality, platform stability, and long-term maintainability. You contribute to both new initiatives and the evolution of existing systems, while helping the team raise its technical bar.

What you’ll do

• You design, develop, and maintain PHP-based applications using Symfony and Laravel, taking ownership of code quality and architectural consistency.
• You help set up, manage, and optimize PHP platforms, ensuring performance, security, and operational stability.
• You contribute to front-end development where relevant, using Angular and/or Vue.js, in close collaboration with other engineers.
• You design and implement integrations through API platforms, ensuring reliable communication between systems.
• You work with MySQL and/or MariaDB, contributing to schema design, performance tuning, and data integrity.
• You operate comfortably in a DevOps context, collaborating on CI/CD pipelines and deployment flows.
• You take an active role in improving development practices, tooling, and workflows within the team.
• You share knowledge with other developers, help coach less experienced colleagues, and contribute to technical decision-making.

What are we looking for?

• You have at least 5 years of experience as a PHP developer in professional environments.
• You have strong, hands-on experience with Symfony and/or Laravel and feel comfortable taking ownership of complex codebases.
• You have experience building and consuming APIs in distributed application landscapes.
• You are comfortable working with relational databases such as MySQL or MariaDB.
• You have experience working on Linux-based environments, ideally supported by formal training or certification.
• You understand modern development practices and have experience working in Agile teams.
• You are able to code, test, debug, and troubleshoot efficiently and independently.
• You are fluent in Dutch (CEFR C2). This is a mandatory requirement.

Nice to have

• You have experience with CI/CD tooling such as GitHub Actions.
• You have worked with container technologies like Docker.
• You have experience coaching developers or taking a technical lead role within a team.
• You have exposure to Unity3D or similar technologie

What do we offer?

Ghent (hybrid)

Start date: ASAP

End date: 31/12/2026

Contract: Freelance or Permanent