PHP Technical Lead - WFH/Remote

This is a fully remote role with a PH night shift schedule (9 PM–6 AM), and work equipment will be provided.

About the role

We are looking for a hands-on PHP Technical Lead to guide development of a custom ERP supporting daily business operations for approximately 120 employees. You will work with the existing architect and lead developer to align technical decisions, coordinate delivery, and maintain code quality while actively implementing and reviewing changes.

The role begins with learning the system through bug fixes and small features, then expands into leading agreed project work. Success means helping the team deliver dependable changes with less avoidable rework while protecting business workflows and respecting the established architecture.

The ERP originated from webERP and combines older PHP pages with newer controllers, model classes, and reusable views. Backend classes and frontend pages live in two GitHub repositories and communicate through PHP includes and direct function calls. The frontend uses JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Development environments use Docker; production is self-hosted. Reviews combine CodeRabbit, human review, staging checks, and existing unit-style test scripts.

Business areas include accounting, payroll, HR, CRM, inventory, sales, work orders, and reporting. The ERP is the master record for inventory and product information synchronized to an ecommerce site through APIs.

Key responsibilities

• Lead technical planning and implementation for assigned ERP enhancements; break work into manageable tasks, identify dependencies, and surface delivery risks and trade-offs.
• Remain hands-on with complex debugging and development. Trace dependencies across PHP pages, backend classes, data, and integrations; align significant design changes with the existing architect.
• Define proportionate testing and regression checks for assigned work. Review test evidence, data integrity risks, and release and rollback plans with the existing team before recommending release.
• Review pull requests for correctness, maintainability, and downstream impact. Coach developers on coding conventions, debugging, and test design, and help unblock technical issues.
• Work with business users and technical stakeholders to clarify requirements, agree on acceptance criteria, estimate effort, and recommend priorities based on business impact, risk, and dependencies.
• Guide incremental improvements to documentation, test coverage, and maintainability. Preserve consistent interfaces and capture business rules and technical decisions to support team onboarding.
• Set clear expectations for reviewing AI-assisted work; verify automated findings and ensure developers remain accountable for code correctness, testing, and approved data handling.

About you

• Strong production PHP experience plus demonstrated technical leadership of a small development team or project, including hands-on delivery in inherited procedural and object-oriented systems.
• Strong PHP fundamentals, debugging, and design judgment; ability to evaluate technical options and improve an unfamiliar system incrementally within existing constraints.
• Practical SQL and relational database skills, including tracing data usage, troubleshooting queries, and assessing the impact of changes on related workflows.
• Working proficiency in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS for maintaining server-rendered applications and existing user interfaces.
• Experience leading code reviews, assessing regression risks, and establishing meaningful test and release checks for interconnected applications with incomplete test coverage.
• Proficiency with Git, GitHub pull requests, code review, staging validation, and Docker-based local development.
• Clear stakeholder communication: translate business needs into scoped technical work, explain trade-offs, resolve conflicting requirements, and escalate decisions beyond agreed authority.
• Evidence of mentoring developers, dividing and coordinating work, providing defensible estimates, and taking technical ownership through implementation, review, and release.
• Preferred: Custom ERP, webERP, or other long-running business systems covering accounting, inventory, payroll, CRM, or operational workflows.
• Preferred: API integrations and data synchronization between an internal system and an ecommerce platform.