Hire PHP and Laravel Developers — Modernisation, Security, Long-Term Support

Hiring a PHP developer through Techtweek Infotech means one named engineer takes ownership of your PHP application — Laravel, Symfony, WordPress or the bespoke system somebody wrote in 2014 and nobody wants to touch. The engineer works in your repo on a monthly engagement, and most of this work is not greenfield: it is getting a revenue-critical application off an unsupported PHP version without breaking it.

This page covers the work, the stack, contracting, cost and start times.

What we are usually hired for

Laravel builds and extensions. New applications, API back ends, queues, Horizon, Nova, Filament, package upgrades and the Laravel version jumps teams keep deferring.

PHP 8.x upgrades. PHP 7.4 reached end of life in November 2022. If you are still on it, every unpatched CVE since then is yours, and it now shows up as a finding in PCI DSS and ISO 27001 assessments. We do these incrementally with a test harness in front, not as a big-bang weekend.

Legacy modernisation without a rewrite. Strangler-pattern refactoring, dependency injection introduced where it pays, Composer brought under control, tests added around the parts that actually change. A rewrite is the most expensive answer and rarely the right one.

Security hardening. Input handling, SQL injection and XSS remediation, session and auth review, secrets out of the repo, dependency scanning in CI. Our group runs PCI DSS, ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2 engagements, so the fixes are done the way an assessor will later test them — see vulnerability assessment and penetration testing if you want the assessment itself.

WordPress and CMS estates. Custom plugins and themes, performance, multi-site, and the hardening a public-facing WordPress install needs to survive.

Stack

Layer	Covered
Frameworks	Laravel, Symfony, CodeIgniter, Slim, WordPress, Drupal
PHP	7.4 through 8.3 migrations, Composer, PHPStan, PHP-CS-Fixer
Data	MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Redis, Elasticsearch
Front end alongside	Blade, Livewire, Inertia, Vue, React
Delivery	Docker, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, AWS, cPanel and bare-metal estates
Testing	PHPUnit, Pest, Laravel Dusk

Engineers are placed at mid or senior level.

Why Techtweek rather than a marketplace

PHP has more cheap supply than any other stack, which is exactly why the selection matters.

CERT-In empanelled and an AWS Advanced Tier Partner — relevant here because most PHP engagements we take on are security or hosting problems wearing a development costume.

Zero-finding audits on selected PCI DSS, ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2 engagements.

16+ years in production, 450+ projects, 94% job success, including a 100% job-success record over 5,900+ hours of public Upwork work.

We run the servers too. Our DevOps and 24/7 NOC monitoring practice means the upgrade has somewhere to land and someone watching it afterwards.

The Engineer Passport

Before you interview anyone you receive a one-page dossier: named CV with the applications actually shipped, certifications with verification links, background-check status and date, device and MDM posture, the exact systems and data the engineer needs access to, and a signed NDA and IP assignment. Ask for a redacted sample on the call.

Contracting

An MSA plus a per-role SOW naming the engineer, the deliverables, the overlap hours, the IP assignment and the notice period. US clients are invoiced monthly in USD corp-to-corp — no co-employment exposure, no payroll administration on your side. UK clients are engaged on the same structure as a contracted-out service. You own the code and the IP from day one.

Long-running maintenance is usually better bought as a fixed monthly retainer than hourly. Ask for that shape if the work is upkeep rather than a project.

How fast an engineer starts

Two to three weeks. PHP engineers are matched against your codebase rather than pulled off a bench — a Laravel specialist and someone who can safely modernise a bespoke 2014 application are not the same hire.

What it costs

Seniority	Rate
Mid-level PHP developer	$22–32/hr
Senior PHP developer	$32–45/hr
Senior Laravel specialist	$35–50/hr

Laravel carries a premium over general PHP in every market. US agencies bill comparable developers at $72–115/hr. Full rate card within one business day of asking.

If the engineer is not the right fit

• Two-week paid pilot with an exit clause
• Free replacement inside 14 days, at our cost
• Named engineer, no substitution without your written agreement
• Four hours of overlap with your working day, written into the SOW

How much does it cost to hire a PHP developer?

$22–32/hr at mid level and $32–45/hr at senior level through Techtweek Infotech, billed monthly; $35–50/hr for a senior Laravel specialist. US agencies bill comparable developers at $72–115/hr. Ongoing maintenance is usually cheaper as a fixed monthly retainer than hourly.

Is PHP still worth investing in?

For an application that already earns money, almost always yes. PHP 8.3 is fast, typed where you want it to be, and Laravel is a credible modern framework. The expensive mistake is not choosing PHP — it is staying on an unsupported version until a failed audit or a breach forces the decision on someone else's timetable.

We are on PHP 7.4. How bad is that?

It stopped receiving security fixes in November 2022. Everything found since is unpatched in your stack, and assessors now treat an end-of-life runtime as a finding in its own right. The upgrade is usually two to six weeks depending on how much of the code assumes behaviour that changed in PHP 8.

Should we upgrade or rewrite?

Upgrade, in almost every case we see. A rewrite means paying twice for the same features and shipping nothing new while you do it. Rewrite only when the application cannot express the business as it now works — not because the code is unpleasant to read.

Can the engineer work on WordPress as well?

Yes — custom plugins and themes, performance, multi-site and hardening. If the work is mostly content and page building rather than engineering, say so and we will scope it smaller instead of selling you a developer.

Start the conversation

Send the codebase, the PHP version and when you need someone. You will hear back within one business day with engineer profiles, the rate card and a start date. Contact the team.

Related: hire dedicated developers, hire full stack developers, hire a DevSecOps engineer, hire DevOps engineers.