Associate Team Lead - PHP (Laravel)

Associate Team Lead PHP (Laravel)

Experience: 6+ years | Track: Technical Leadership

Company Overview

Mallow Technologies is a custom software development company with experts covering a wide variety of the latest software development domains. We take pride in delivering high-quality mobile and web applications based on client needs. We do not just build software we build innovative digital solutions that create business value.

Job Summary

We're looking for an experienced Laravel (PHP) developer ready to step into a technical leadership role as Associate Team Lead. This role requires ownership of technical depth (architecture, code quality, delivery) and people and process leadership (mentoring, client relationships, building repeatable systems for the team). You'll own outcomes for your accounts and projects, be the technical backbone your team leans on, and build the people around you into a genuinely strong team one that delivers well because of the capability you've built into it. This role reports into the PHP Team Lead and is a proving ground for team lead / engineering manager responsibilities.

Roles & Responsibilities

• Own architecture and key technical design decisions across the projects you support, not just your own modules.
• Lead high-quality code reviews that raise the technical bar for the whole team, not just catch bugs.
• Actively drive down technical debt and enforce coding standards across the codebase.
• Build architectural breadth beyond PHP/Laravel working knowledge of DevOps, DBA fundamentals, microservices, and frontend stacks so you can reason about a project end-to-end, not just your layer.
• Make effective use of AI-assisted development tools (Claude, Cursor, Copilot, etc.) across the full delivery workflow, and build enough working knowledge of AI/ML/LLM fundamentals to assess integration requirements at your level.
• Invest in reusable templates, libraries, and internal tooling that reduce delivery time and raise output quality and consistency.
• Ensure on-time, high-quality delivery across the accounts and projects you own; keep defect and rework rates low.
• Maintain milestone adherence, flag risks early, and put mitigation plans in place before they become escalations.
• Push delivery past technically working” to business outcomes the client actually feels — understand the underlying problem, not just the ticket.
• Maintain trusted client relationships on your accounts; handle escalations promptly and professionally.
• Communicate proactively with stakeholders — internal and client — so nobody is surprised by status.
• Build and sustain a high-engagement, motivated environment for your team; own the culture within it.
• Measurably upskill junior and mid-level engineers through hands-on coaching, pairing, and unblocking on hard problems.
• Run regular knowledge-sharing sessions and keep technical documentation current.
• Delegate meaningfully — hand off decision-making authority, not just tasks — to grow a self-sufficient team.
• Move the team away from person-dependent execution — document, standardise, and systematise repeatable work.
• Design processes for your area that hold up regardless of who is executing them, and track whether they're actually being followed.
• Make timely, informed decisions with the data and stakeholders available, and own them fully once made.
• Take initiative on problems beyond your own scope, without waiting to be asked.

Key Skills & Expertise

• Strong hands-on expertise in PHP with extensive experience in the Laravel framework — MVC, Eloquent ORM, Service Container, Middleware, Events, Queues, Artisan CLI.
• Proven experience designing and building RESTful APIs and integrating third-party services.
• Strong database skills (MySQL/PostgreSQL) — schema design, indexing, query optimisation at scale.
• Solid grounding in software design principles, SOLID, and clean architecture.
• Practical, day-to-day use of AI-assisted development tools (Claude, Cursor, Copilot or similar) as part of your own workflow.
• Experience mentoring or informally leading other developers — code reviews, pairing, unblocking.
• Comfortable owning client conversations — status updates, scope discussions, pushing back on unrealistic asks.
• Experience with Git-based collaborative workflows and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or similar).
• Working knowledge of caching, queue-based processing, and background jobs (Redis, Horizon, Supervisor, or similar).
• Strong communication skills — able to explain technical trade-offs clearly to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
• Prior experience as a lead, module owner, or informal team anchor on a project.
• Exposure to cloud platforms (AWS, DigitalOcean, Azure) and observability tooling (Grafana, Prometheus, ELK, OpenTelemetry).
• Familiarity with frontend frameworks (Vue.js, React.js, Livewire) enough to collaborate credibly with frontend engineers.
• Exposure to microservices or event-driven architecture (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SNS/SQS).
• Prior involvement in client pitches, proposals, or technical due diligence for new business.

What We're Looking For

This role suits someone who is already operating like a lead in practice — the team already comes to them for technical calls — and is ready to make that formal. We're looking for strong PHP/Laravel depth combined with genuine interest in growing people and building systems, not just writing code. Judgment and follow-through matter more than raw output: someone who can make a call with incomplete information, own the outcome, and course-correct without needing to be told.