Hire PHP Developers in India | Core PHP, Laravel & API Specialists
Dedicated PHP developers who can read a codebase before rewriting it. Core PHP, Laravel, Symfony, CodeIgniter, legacy upgrades and PHP 8 migrations. One monthly figure, from $960/mo, profiles in 48 hours.
Four questions and we can shortlist
PHP is the widest-spread language on this site and the briefs vary enormously. These four answers turn a fortnight of interviews into 48 hours.
- Framework, or core PHP with no framework?
- Which PHP version is in production?
- New build, legacy maintenance, or an upgrade?
- Does this person touch the front end?
No forms. You get profiles and the full rate card.
What our PHP developers actually work on
PHP briefs split more sharply than any other language we staff. A greenfield Laravel API and a fifteen-year-old core PHP billing system are both "PHP developer" jobs, and the person who is excellent at one is often wrong for the other.
Six shapes cover nearly everything that comes through. Naming yours is the single most useful sentence in your brief.
Maintaining and extending a legacy codebase
The most common PHP engagement we run, and the least advertised by agencies because it is unglamorous. A working system that earns money, written by people who left, with no tests and a deploy process involving FTP. The skill here is restraint: read it, add the feature without breaking the invoice run, and improve one thing on the way out. Developers who open with "we should rewrite this in Laravel" are the wrong hire.
PHP version upgrades
PHP 5.6 or 7.x to a supported 8.x release. Deprecated functions, changed string-to-number comparison semantics, removed extensions such as the old mysql_* family, and dependencies pinned to versions that will not install. Genuinely valuable work with a clear finish line, and usually the cheapest security improvement available to an ageing application.
Backend and API development
JSON APIs for a mobile app or a React front end, webhook receivers, third-party integrations, payment gateways, queued jobs and scheduled tasks. Modern PHP is a perfectly good API language and PHP-FPM behind Nginx handles serious traffic. This is where we place the most Laravel and Symfony developers.
New builds on a framework
Admin panels, internal tools, marketplaces, booking systems, SaaS back ends. Laravel dominates new work for good reasons: Eloquent, migrations, queues, a strong package ecosystem and a large hiring pool. If you have no existing constraint, this is the default we recommend.
Performance and database work
The page that takes nine seconds. Almost always N+1 queries, a missing index, or a report built by looping over rows in PHP instead of asking the database. Scoped, measurable, and easy to brief: send the slow URL and the query log. Often the highest-value week you will buy.
Security remediation
Concatenated SQL replaced with prepared statements, unescaped output fixed, file uploads restricted, sessions and password hashing brought up to date, secrets moved out of the repository. If you have had a penetration-test report or an incident, this is a defined engagement rather than an open-ended one.
CMS work sits slightly apart. If the job is really WordPress, Magento or Shopify, the specialist pools are different and we staff them separately: WordPress developers, Magento developers and Shopify developers.
Hire core PHP developers, or framework developers?
This is the question we get asked most often on PHP briefs, and there is a real answer rather than a diplomatic one. "Core PHP" means PHP without a framework: your own routing, your own database layer, your own templates. Plenty of profitable systems are built that way and there is nothing inherently wrong with it.
What matters is whether the core PHP was a decision or an accident. A small, well-organised core PHP application with prepared statements, a sane directory structure and one clear entry point is a fine thing to maintain, and hiring for it is straightforward. A core PHP application that grew for a decade without one, where business logic lives in the same file as the HTML and every page opens its own database connection, is a different proposition. It still works. It is just expensive to change, and it needs a specific kind of developer.
| Your situation | Who to hire | What to watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Large legacy core PHP system, still earning | Core PHP developer with maintenance temperament | Candidates who only know Laravel will be slow here, because there is no framework doing the work for them. Ask what they did on their last undocumented codebase. |
| New project, no constraints | Laravel developer | Largest pool, fastest delivery, easiest to replace later. Choosing core PHP for a new build now needs a specific justification. |
| Core PHP you want modernised | Someone fluent in both | The scarce profile and worth paying for. Migration is incremental: introduce Composer and an autoloader, then a router, then move logic out of templates. Never a big-bang rewrite. |
| Enterprise system, strict architecture | Symfony developer | Smaller pool than Laravel, more rigour. Reasonable when the organisation already standardises on it. |
One honest warning about core PHP hiring. It attracts two very different candidates: experienced engineers who understand what a framework abstracts and can work without one, and inexperienced developers who have simply never learned a framework. Both describe themselves the same way on a CV. The separator is a question about structure, not syntax: ask how they would organise a new core PHP project today, and listen for Composer, an autoloader, a single front controller, prepared statements and configuration outside the web root. Someone who reaches for those has chosen core PHP. Someone who describes a folder of pages each with an include at the top has not.
If your codebase is core PHP and you already know it needs to change, say so in the brief. It shifts the shortlist from framework specialists to people who enjoy the archaeology, and there are fewer of those but they are not expensive.
PHP frameworks: which one you are on, and who you need
Tell us the framework and the version and the shortlist changes completely. Here is our honest read on each, including the ones where we would tell you the pool is thin.
Hire PHP developers in India for Laravel
Laravel is the default for new PHP work and has the deepest hiring pool of any PHP framework by a wide margin. It gives you the Eloquent ORM, database migrations and seeders, a queue system, events and listeners, Blade templating, scheduled commands and a first-class testing setup, so a competent developer spends their time on your business rules instead of rebuilding plumbing.
A Laravel PHP developer working on your codebase will be writing controllers and form requests, Eloquent models with their relationships, migrations for every schema change, jobs for anything slow, and Blade views or an API layer depending on the front end. A frontend Laravel PHP developer works in Blade, Tailwind and increasingly Livewire, which lets you build interactive interfaces without a separate JavaScript application. A backend Laravel PHP developer owns the models, services, queues, policies and the REST APIs your mobile app or React client consumes. Filament is worth naming separately if you need an admin panel, because it removes weeks of CRUD work and not every Laravel developer has used it.
Two things to state in the brief. Which Laravel version, because upgrades across major versions are their own engagement and a codebase several versions behind is carrying dependency risk. And whether the front end is Blade, Livewire, Inertia or a separate React application, since those are genuinely different day-to-day jobs. If Laravel is the entire role rather than one framework among several, we have a dedicated page for hiring Laravel developers in India.
Hire PHP developers in India for Symfony
Symfony is the enterprise-grade PHP framework: component-based, explicit, and stricter about architecture than Laravel. Its components underpin a great deal of the PHP world, including Drupal and parts of Laravel itself, so a developer with real Symfony depth transfers well to almost any modern PHP codebase. Where Laravel gives you conventions, Symfony gives you configuration and dependency injection, which is why it tends to be chosen by organisations that value predictability over speed.
A Symfony PHP developer on your project works with controllers and routing attributes, Doctrine entities and repositories rather than Eloquent models, Twig templates instead of Blade, the service container, event subscribers, and Symfony's own form and validation components. A backend Symfony PHP developer handles Doctrine mappings, migrations, message handlers and REST or GraphQL API development, often through API Platform. A frontend Symfony PHP developer works in Twig with Webpack Encore or Vite for assets.
The pool is smaller than Laravel's and skews more senior, which affects both timeline and rate. Tell us the Symfony major version and whether Doctrine or API Platform is in play, because a developer fluent in Doctrine is a narrower filter than one who simply knows Symfony's routing.
Hire PHP developers in India for CodeIgniter
CodeIgniter is a lightweight PHP framework with a small footprint and almost no configuration, built on a straightforward MVC structure: controllers handle the request, models talk to the database, views render the output, and helpers hold the shared functions. It was deployed very widely in India through the 2010s, which is why there is both a large body of live CodeIgniter 3 applications and a deep pool of PHP developers who learned the framework properly rather than from a tutorial.
Most people who come to us for a CodeIgniter PHP developer already have a working application and need someone who can read it before changing it. That work is concrete: adding controllers and models for a new module, extending existing views, writing query-builder code that does not turn into an N+1, and adding the RESTful endpoints a mobile app or React front end now needs. If you want a frontend CodeIgniter PHP developer, you are asking for someone who builds the views, forms, validation messages and layouts — HTML, CSS and the JavaScript that sits on top. If you want a backend CodeIgniter PHP developer, you are asking for models, libraries, database design, authentication and REST API development in CodeIgniter. Plenty of our developers do both, but naming which half matters gets you a materially better shortlist.
Name your version. CodeIgniter 3 and CodeIgniter 4 differ enough that they are close to separate hires: CI4 brings namespaces, PSR-4 autoloading, a different directory layout and an entity/model split that CI3 has no equivalent for. Migrating CI3 to CI4 is a real engagement rather than an upgrade command, and it is one of the more common briefs we take. Tell us the version, whether the job is maintenance, a new module or a migration, and whether the person touches the views — that is enough for us to shortlist in 48 hours.
Hire PHP developers in India for Yii2
Yii2 is a component-based PHP framework known for speed, aggressive caching support and a security-conscious design: input filtering, output escaping, CSRF and SQL-injection protection are built into the way you are meant to work rather than bolted on. It scales well on large applications and is common in codebases built between roughly 2014 and 2020.
A Yii2 PHP developer works with controllers and actions, Active Record models, views and widgets, Gii for scaffolding, behaviours and components for shared logic, and RBAC when the application has real permission complexity. A backend Yii2 PHP developer handles Active Record relations, migrations, console commands and REST API development, which Yii2 supports natively through its ActiveController and resource classes. A frontend Yii2 PHP developer works in the view layer with widgets, GridView and ActiveForm.
The pool is markedly narrower than Laravel or CodeIgniter, so expect a longer shortlist and be open to a strong general PHP engineer who will pick the framework up in a fortnight. Where Yii2 experience genuinely is decisive is a large customised application, because the value there is knowing the framework's behaviours and escape hatches rather than its syntax.
Hire PHP developers in India for CakePHP
CakePHP follows convention over configuration, so with sensible table and class naming a great deal wires itself up with no XML or YAML at all. Its baking tool scaffolds controllers, models and views quickly, which made it popular for rapid internal applications and admin systems.
A CakePHP PHP developer on your codebase works with controllers, Table and Entity classes in the ORM, templates and elements in the view layer, components and behaviours for shared logic, and the CakePHP ORM's query builder. A backend CakePHP PHP developer covers table associations, migrations, shell commands and REST API development through CakePHP's routing and JSON view. A frontend CakePHP PHP developer works in templates, elements and helpers.
Almost everything we see is maintenance and extension of an established application rather than new builds. Name your major version, because CakePHP 2 and CakePHP 4 or 5 are meaningfully different, and a version-2 codebase usually comes with a migration conversation attached.
Hire PHP developers in India for Laminas and Zend Framework
Laminas is the open-source continuation of Zend Framework: heavily object-oriented, component-architected, and built around explicit dependency injection. It turns up most often in finance, insurance and enterprise systems where the application has been running for a decade and correctness matters more than development speed.
A Laminas or Zend PHP developer works with modules, the service manager, controllers and plugins, Laminas Db or Doctrine for persistence, view models and the form and input-filter components. A backend Zend Framework PHP developer handles the module configuration, database layer, event manager and API endpoints. The frontend side is usually thin, since these applications tend to be server-rendered and functional rather than design-led.
The pool is small and skews senior, which is reflected in the rate. If you are still on Zend Framework rather than Laminas, say so, because the rename involved namespace changes across the whole codebase and that migration is frequently part of the engagement rather than a prerequisite for it.
Hire PHP developers in India for Phalcon, Slim and Lumen
These three come up when performance or minimalism was the deciding factor. Phalcon is unusual in being delivered as a compiled C extension, which makes it very fast and makes your hosting requirements a real consideration, since the extension has to be installed on the server. Slim is a microframework suited to a small focused API where Laravel would be overkill. Lumen is Laravel's stripped-down sibling, though for new work most teams now use Laravel itself.
A Phalcon PHP developer works with its volt templates, models and dependency injection container, and needs to understand the extension's deployment implications. A Slim PHP developer is essentially building a PSR-7 and PSR-15 application: routes, middleware, a container of your choosing, and REST endpoints with no framework opinions imposed. Both are backend-weighted roles by nature.
All three have small pools, and we will say so rather than pretend to a bench we do not have. For any of them we put forward strong general PHP engineers with the specific framework as a secondary filter, because the concepts transfer and the conventions are learnable in days.
Hire PHP developers in India for WordPress and WooCommerce
WordPress is PHP, and a large share of what people describe as PHP work is actually WordPress work: custom themes, custom plugins, ACF-driven page builders, Gutenberg blocks, the REST API for a headless front end, and WooCommerce when the site sells something.
A WordPress PHP developer writes custom post types and taxonomies, hooks into actions and filters rather than editing core, builds theme templates against the template hierarchy, and creates plugins that survive a WordPress update. A WooCommerce PHP developer additionally handles product types, checkout and cart hooks, payment gateway integration, order workflows and the performance problems that arrive with a large catalogue. A frontend WordPress PHP developer works in theme templates, Gutenberg block development and CSS; a backend WordPress PHP developer handles custom plugins, database queries through WPDB, REST endpoints and integrations.
Worth being honest about the split: theme-and-plugin configuration is a different and cheaper skill from custom plugin engineering, and conflating them in a brief is the most common reason a WordPress hire disappoints. If WordPress is the whole role, see hiring WordPress developers in India.
Hire PHP developers in India for Magento, PrestaShop and OpenCart
PHP powers a large part of self-hosted e-commerce. Magento 2, now Adobe Commerce, is the enterprise end: modular, powerful and genuinely complex, with a dependency injection system, plugins and interceptors, and a learning curve steeper than any PHP framework on this page. PrestaShop and OpenCart sit at the mid-market, with simpler module systems and much shorter ramp-up.
A Magento 2 PHP developer builds modules rather than editing core, works with dependency injection, plugins, observers, layout XML and PHTML templates, and spends real time on indexing, caching and catalogue performance. A backend Magento PHP developer handles modules, REST and GraphQL APIs, ERP and payment integrations and the message queue. A frontend Magento PHP developer works in Luma or Hyvä themes, layout XML, KnockoutJS and LESS. A PrestaShop or OpenCart PHP developer works with modules, overrides, theme templates and payment or shipping integrations, and is a considerably faster hire.
Two practical notes. Magento 1 is end-of-life and unsupported, so if you are still on it the engagement is a Magento 1 to 2 migration rather than maintenance. And Magento experience does not transfer from general PHP the way CodeIgniter or CakePHP does — this is one place where the framework filter is genuinely hard. See hiring Magento developers in India if that is the whole role.
Hire PHP developers in India for Drupal, Joomla and Moodle
Three long-lived PHP platforms that come with their own conventions. Drupal is the most architecturally serious, built on Symfony components since version 8, with a strong content-modelling system that suits government, university and publisher sites. Joomla sits between WordPress and Drupal in complexity. Moodle is the dominant open-source LMS and is PHP throughout.
A Drupal PHP developer builds custom modules, works with entities, fields, Views, hooks and services, and writes Twig templates in the theme layer — much of which is recognisable to a Symfony developer. A Joomla PHP developer works with components, modules, plugins and templates. A Moodle PHP developer builds plugins, activity modules, custom reports and integrations against Moodle's web services, which is a genuinely specialised skill worth filtering for explicitly.
All three are usually maintenance and extension rather than new builds, and all three reward platform-specific experience more than general PHP strength, because each has its own way of doing things that is easy to fight and expensive to fight badly. Name your major version, particularly for Drupal, where 7 to 10 is a rebuild rather than an upgrade.
Hire PHP developers in India for REST and GraphQL API development
A large share of modern PHP work is API work, with the front end handled by React, Vue or a mobile app. Every framework on this page can do it: Laravel through API resources and Sanctum, Symfony through API Platform, CodeIgniter and Yii2 through their own REST support, and Slim when you want nothing but PSR-7 and middleware.
A PHP API developer designs the endpoints and the error contract, validates input at the boundary, handles authentication with tokens or OAuth, adds pagination, filtering and rate limiting, writes the OpenAPI description if anyone else consumes it, and makes sure the database access behind it does not become an N+1. For GraphQL in PHP, Lighthouse on Laravel and API Platform on Symfony are the common choices, and the specific problems are query depth limits and the N+1 that GraphQL makes especially easy to create.
If your brief is "PHP backend for a React app", say that explicitly rather than naming a framework. It tells us to screen for API design and validation discipline rather than templating, and those are close to opposite skill emphases. Pair it with a React developer and one team owns the whole stack.
A pattern worth naming: outside Laravel and Symfony, framework-specific experience matters less than it appears. A good PHP engineer moves between Yii, CakePHP and CodeIgniter in a week or two, because the concepts are shared and the differences are conventions. Where framework experience genuinely is decisive is the opposite case, on a large legacy application with heavy customisation, because there the value is knowing the framework's escape hatches and quirks.
What your PHP developer will do once you hire them
A fair question that most staffing pages avoid answering. Here is the actual work, in roughly the order it happens.
Read your codebase before changing it
Week one is getting the application running locally, tracing how a request reaches the database, and finding out how deploys and secrets actually work. Nothing gets refactored in the first fortnight. If they cannot run it locally by day two, that is a problem to solve immediately rather than work around.
Write controllers, models and views
The daily work on any MVC codebase: a controller to handle the request, a model or repository for the data, a view or JSON response for the output. On Laravel that means form requests and Eloquent; on CodeIgniter, controllers and the query builder; on Symfony, Doctrine entities and Twig. Same shape, different vocabulary.
Build and document REST APIs
Endpoints for your mobile app or JavaScript front end, with authentication, validation, pagination and a consistent error format. The documentation matters as much as the endpoints, because whoever consumes them is usually not the person who wrote them. Expect an OpenAPI description or at minimum a maintained Postman collection.
Write database migrations, never manual schema edits
Every schema change goes in a versioned migration so staging and production stay reproducible. Anyone editing tables by hand in phpMyAdmin is building a problem you will meet at the worst possible moment. Seeders come with it, so a new developer can populate a working local database in one command.
Fix the slow pages, with evidence
Read the query log, find the N+1 or the missing index, fix it with eager loading or a join, then measure again. Caching comes after the query is correct, not instead of it. This is usually the fastest visible win on an inherited application and it is easy to verify.
Validate input and close security holes
Prepared statements everywhere, output escaped, file uploads restricted by type and size, passwords hashed properly, secrets in the environment rather than the repository. On legacy PHP this is often the highest-value work available, and it rarely appears on a roadmap until something happens.
Integrate the third parties
Payment gateways, shipping carriers, CRMs, accounting systems, SMS and email providers. The work that separates a good integration from a fragile one is the unglamorous half: timeouts, retries with backoff, signature verification on incoming webhooks, and idempotency so a duplicate delivery does not charge someone twice.
Move slow work off the request
Emails, report generation, image processing, data imports and anything calling a third party belong in a queued job, not in the page load. They will also make those jobs safe to retry, because a queue that delivers a job twice is normal rather than exceptional.
Write tests around what matters
PHPUnit or Pest on the logic that handles money, permissions and anything with legal consequences. On an untested legacy codebase they add a test around the thing they are about to change, which is what makes the change safe rather than hopeful. Full coverage is not the goal; confidence in the risky parts is.
Open small pull requests and respond to review
Small, frequent pull requests with a description explaining why, not just what. On a remote engagement they open a draft PR at the start of a task so you can redirect the approach early instead of reviewing a week of work at once. Review comments get answered, not silently overwritten.
Join your standup and work your board
They report to your lead, take tickets from your tracker and follow your release process. We handle employment, payroll, equipment and cover; the technical direction is entirely yours. If you would rather brief outcomes than tickets, that is a team engagement with a lead rather than a single developer.
Leave documentation behind
On any legacy or service-ownership engagement we require an architecture note committed to your repository inside the first fortnight, covering how the application is structured, how it deploys and where the traps are. You own that document regardless of what happens to the engagement, and it is what makes a replacement productive in days instead of weeks.
Does a PHP developer do your front end?
People search for "frontend PHP developer" and "backend PHP developer" as if they were two roles. They are not quite, and the confusion causes real hiring mistakes, so it is worth being precise.
PHP runs on the server. Every PHP developer is a backend developer in the strict sense. What people mean by "frontend PHP" is usually a developer who also writes the templates, HTML and CSS that PHP renders: Blade or Twig views, some jQuery, a Bootstrap or Tailwind layout. That is a real and useful profile, especially on server-rendered applications, and it is what most PHP developers in India have done at some point.
What it is not is a React or Vue engineer. The two skill sets diverged years ago, and expecting one hire to cover Laravel architecture and a component-driven single-page application is where projects slip. Here is how we map briefs.
| What you need built | Hire | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Server-rendered app, Blade or Twig views, light JavaScript | One PHP developer | Genuinely one job. Ask to see a page they built end to end, and check the HTML is semantic and the CSS is not inline. |
| PHP API plus a React or Vue front end | Two people, or a genuine full-stack hire | A full-stack PHP developer can do both but moves slower on each. Fine for an MVP, limiting once both sides grow. |
| Existing PHP backend, front end needs rebuilding | PHP developer plus a React developer | The most common pairing we place. The PHP developer exposes JSON endpoints; the React developer consumes them. |
| Design handoffs, pixel-accurate UI, no backend | Front-end developer, not PHP | Hiring a PHP developer for this is a common and expensive mismatch. |
If you want one person covering both layers, ask for it explicitly as full-stack and set expectations on pace accordingly. We would rather set that expectation now than have you discover it in week three.
Where to hire PHP developers: three channels compared
PHP has the widest supply of any language we staff, which cuts both ways. You will find someone in a day; the variance in quality is the widest too. That makes the channel choice more consequential here than elsewhere.
| Channel | Best for | What it costs you | Where it breaks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freelance marketplaces | A bug fix, a plugin, one integration, a scoped performance job you can verify objectively. | Lowest headline rate; all screening is yours; platform fees on top. | Legacy work. A freelancer with no context makes the fast change, not the safe one, and continuity is not part of the deal. This is where most PHP hiring goes wrong. |
| Staff augmentation (this is us) | Ongoing ownership of a PHP application, legacy maintenance, upgrades, a standing roadmap. You direct; we supply and hold the person. | One monthly figure per seat covering pay, compliance, equipment, workspace and cover. | It needs someone on your side to prioritise and review. Without that, any augmented developer drifts. |
| Dedicated project agency | A fixed deliverable with a deadline and no internal engineers at all. | Highest per-hour, because you also buy management and a fixed scope. | Change mid-build, and keeping the knowledge afterwards. |
If you run the hire yourself, four steps
- Write down the constraints before the ad. PHP version, framework and version, database, hosting, whether tests exist, whether the person touches the front end. A brief with those six facts outperforms one that says "PHP developer, 3+ years" by a wide margin.
- Screen on evidence. Open something they built. Read commit history for small, frequent commits. On legacy briefs, ask specifically about a codebase they inherited and what they chose not to change.
- Set a paid exercise on real-shaped work. Not algorithm puzzles. A small endpoint with validation, a database query that must not N+1, and one deliberately injectable query to notice. Then review it together and change a requirement.
- Onboard properly in week one. Local environment running on day one, repository access, a written note on how deploys happen, a first ticket small enough to merge in three days, and a named person to ask. Most remote PHP hires that fail, fail here, not at selection.
All four run on our side before you see a profile. The next section is the part we consider non-negotiable.
How to hire PHP developers: what to look for and how to test it
PHP's reputation problem is not the language, which has been good for a decade. It is that PHP's low barrier to entry produced an enormous population of developers with wildly varying rigour, and a CV does not distinguish them. These five checks do, in the order we weight them.
1. Do they parameterise queries without being asked?
The single highest-signal check in PHP hiring. Set an exercise that takes user input and queries the database, say nothing about security, and look at what comes back. Prepared statements with bound parameters, through PDO or an ORM, is the pass. String concatenation into SQL is an immediate fail regardless of seniority, and it is still common. Plant one injectable query in code you ask them to review and see whether they mention it unprompted.
2. Can they find an N+1 query?
Show a page that loads a list and then queries inside the loop. Ask why it is slow. You want them to reach for the query log or a profiler and then fix it with eager loading or a join, not to add a cache in front of the problem. This one bug accounts for more slow PHP pages than everything else, and it is the fastest way to tell a developer who has run something in production from one who has not.
3. Modern PHP, not PHP as of 2014
Composer and autoloading rather than manual includes. Type declarations on parameters and returns. Namespaces. Exceptions rather than returning false and checking. Environment configuration outside the web root. Awareness of what changed in PHP 8, particularly the stricter string-to-number comparisons that quietly alter behaviour in old code. A developer who writes 2014 PHP in 2026 will keep your codebase where it is.
4. Restraint on legacy code
Ask directly: "You inherit a working system with no tests and you need to add a feature. What do you do first?" Strong answers start with reading, reproducing locally, and finding the seam where the change belongs. They add a test around the thing they are about to touch. They do not propose a rewrite, and they do not reformat files they did not need to open. This question sorts candidates faster than any technical puzzle.
5. Tests, and the version-control habit
PHPUnit or Pest on the logic, at minimum around the parts that handle money or permissions. Also look at how they commit: small commits with messages explaining why, rather than one commit called "changes". On a codebase you will maintain for years, that habit is worth more than raw speed.
The question we finish on: "Tell me about a PHP decision you got wrong." Concrete answers with what they would do differently mean they have owned something. No answer means they have not been trusted with a decision, or are not being straight.
Our 4-stage PHP developer vetting process
The checks above, run before you spend an hour. You meet finalists, not applicants.
Portfolio and code review
Live applications opened and used. Repository history read for commit discipline. On legacy candidates we ask which inherited codebase they are proudest of not rewriting.
Three-hour build
An endpoint with validation, a query that must not N+1, and a supplied file containing one injectable query and one unescaped output. Security is never mentioned in the brief, on purpose.
Live technical interview
A senior PHP engineer walks the submission, pushes on database design and error handling, and changes a requirement to see how they reason when the goalpost moves.
Background and paperwork
Identity verification, employment history, two reference calls, NDA and IP assignment signed before any client introduction.
PHP developer cost: US, UK and Australia vs India
Base salary is the number people compare and the wrong one. Below are the published figures from each market's official statistics agency, with the methodology attached, because you will be asked to defend these internally.
| Market | Occupation as published | Median annual | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | Software Developers, SOC 15-1252 | $135,980 | BLS OEWS, May 2025 |
| United States | Web Developers, SOC 15-1254 | $92,650 | BLS OEWS, May 2025 |
| United Kingdom | Programmers and software development professionals, SOC 2134 | £56,914 | ONS ASHE 2025, provisional |
| United Kingdom | Web design professionals, SOC 2141 | £48,629 | ONS ASHE 2025, provisional |
| Australia | Business and systems analysts, and programmers, ANZSCO 261 | A$139,776 | ABS Employee Earnings and Hours, May 2025 |
| India | Software Engineer, average CTC (690k sample) | ₹9.6 lakh | AmbitionBox, self-reported, July 2026 |
Methodology. The US figures come from a government survey covering 1,687,890 employed software developers, with a 25th percentile of $105,210 and a 90th of $214,670 — the spread inside one market is wider than most India comparisons admit. UK data is the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025, provisional, released October 2025; a revised set is due late 2026. Australian data is full-time non-managerial employees at the adult rate, the correct basis for like-for-like comparison. The India figure is self-reported average cost-to-company and carries the widest error bar of the six: Stack Overflow's 2025 survey puts India back-end at roughly $22,086 while its India sample skews junior and student-heavy, and Levels.fyi's India software-engineer median of about $31,432 reflects big-tech and global-capability-centre pay rather than the wider market. Publish India as a range with the sample named, never as a single multiple.
The load matters more than the salary gap. US employer benefit costs run at 47.7% of wages for professional and related occupations, per the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation release of March 2026. Add agency placement at 15–25% of first-year salary, six to ten weeks of vacancy while the seat is empty, equipment, tooling and workspace. Our dedicated monthly figure starts from $960/mo and covers recruitment, vetting, payroll, statutory compliance, HR, equipment, workspace and cover during leave. We publish the anchor rather than a full card because the right number depends on seniority, framework and shift.
Indian salaries are rising, so model for it
Aon's survey put actual Indian pay growth at 8.9% in 2025 with 9.1% projected for 2026, and Deloitte India's Talent Outlook 2026 arrives at the same 9.1%. A three-year business case with a flat India rate is wrong, and any vendor whose pitch depends on the gap never narrowing is not being straight with you.
Pairing matters on PHP projects. Front end alongside the API is usually a React developer; if your stack is moving to JavaScript on the server, a Node.js developer; data and reporting work behind the application is a Python developer conversation. Weighing this against a contractor first? Read freelancers vs dedicated remote teams.
Hiring a dedicated PHP team rather than one developer
A fair number of the briefs that reach us are not for one developer at all. They are for a small team that can own a PHP application outright: someone to build, someone to test, and someone accountable for whether it shipped.
The trigger is usually recognisable. One developer is now the only person who understands the system, every release needs them, and their holiday is a business risk. Or the backlog has grown past what one person clears in a month and the choice is between hiring and deferring the roadmap indefinitely.
Two: developer plus QA
The most cost-effective first expansion, and the one clients most often skip. A dedicated tester changes release confidence more than a second developer does, particularly on a legacy codebase with no automated tests.
Three to four: a pod with a lead
Two PHP developers, a tester, and a lead who owns sequencing and reviews inside the pod. You brief outcomes rather than tickets. This is the point at which you stop managing individuals and start managing delivery.
Five or more: add DevOps
Once several people deploy the same application, the deploy process becomes the bottleneck. A DevOps engineer for pipelines, environments and monitoring pays for itself quickly here.
Two things we would tell you before you buy a team. First, a team needs a decision-maker on your side who can answer questions within a day; without that, more people produce more waiting rather than more output. Second, start smaller than you think and add monthly. Every team we have seen struggle was assembled at full size in week one, before anyone knew where the work actually was.
If you would rather specify a team by role, level and headcount and get a rate card back, that is exactly what Build Your Team does.
PHP developer engagement models
Three ways to buy the same vetted bench. Public anchor is from $960/mo; the full card by seniority and framework comes from Rita or Build Your Team.
Dedicated PHP developer
One engineer, 160 hours a month, yours alone. On your board, in your repo, reporting to your lead. The right default when there is a roadmap rather than a task list.
- Codebase walkthrough before day one
- Shift matched to your market
- 30-day free replacement
- 30-day notice to scale down
Dedicated PHP team
Two to six people with a lead who owns delivery. Developer plus QA is the usual starting shape; DevOps joins once several people deploy the same application.
- Tech lead included
- Code review inside the pod
- Add or drop seats monthly
- Shared sprint cadence with your team
Hourly and sprint-based
Bounded work with a defined end: a PHP 8 upgrade, security remediation after a pen-test report, a slow-page investigation, launch-week cover. Minimum 20 hours a week, time-tracked.
- No monthly commitment
- Agreed target up front
- Weekly time reports
- Converts to dedicated any month
Compare structures in detail: staff augmentation, dedicated teams, hourly engagement.
Working with a remote PHP developer
PHP work is unusually well suited to remote delivery, because most of it is diagnosable from artefacts you can send: a repository, a query log, a slow URL, an error trace. The timezone gap costs you less here than it would on live product discovery.
Overlap is a shift you choose, not a promise
A standard Indian day of 09:30 to 18:30 IST gives a US Eastern client no live overlap. Any vendor claiming four to six hours with New York on a normal India shift has not checked. What is real is that the shift is a decision:
| Your market | India shift | Live overlap |
|---|---|---|
| UK | 13:30–22:30 IST | Full 8 hours |
| UK, no shift premium | 09:30–18:30 IST | 4–5 hours |
| UAE | 09:30–18:30 IST | Effectively the full day |
| Sydney | 05:30–14:30 IST | 7 hours |
| US Eastern | 14:00–23:00 IST | 3.5 hours |
| US Eastern, full day | 18:30–03:30 IST | Full 8 hours |
| US Pacific | 21:30–06:30 IST | Full 8 hours, night shift |
US Pacific is the genuinely hard case and we prefer to say so. No shift gives a Pacific client meaningful overlap without someone working overnight, which carries a premium and narrows the pool. For queued PHP work, though, the gap is an advantage: a bug list handed over at Pacific close is fixed and in pull requests before you open your laptop.
On location: does Bangalore matter?
People do search for a PHP developer in a specific Indian city, usually assuming a particular city means a particular calibre. In our experience it mainly changes cost. Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad carry a salary premium driven by the global capability centres competing for the same people, while strong PHP engineers work from tier-two cities at lower cost with no difference in output on remote work. Because we hire nationally and work remotely, we would rather match you on framework depth and shift than on postcode. If you have a genuine reason to need a specific city, say so and we will filter for it.
Small pull requests, and knowing how deploys happen
Async pull-request review plus one synchronous call a week. Small pull requests, because a 40-file diff arriving overnight is unreviewable. One PHP-specific point worth handling in week one: write down how deploys actually work. A surprising number of PHP applications deploy by copying files, and a remote developer who does not know that will eventually overwrite something. Ten minutes of documentation prevents a bad afternoon.
On English, plainly
We assess written and spoken English individually, weighting written heavily because pull-request descriptions and async updates are the medium. We will not claim India is a uniformly strong English market: the EF English Proficiency Index 2025 ranks India 74th, in its "Low" band. The professional software population is not the national average, and we screen person by person rather than assuming it.
Continuity on a system only one person knows
This is the real risk on legacy PHP, and it exists whether you hire remotely or locally. Our terms: 30-day free replacement, documented handover as a condition of exit, and on any legacy engagement we require an architecture note committed to your repository in the first fortnight. That document is what makes a replacement productive in days rather than weeks, and you own it either way.
PHP skills and expertise we cover
Where a tag matters to your project, name it during matching and we filter the shortlist on it rather than treating it as a nice-to-have.
Nobody is expert in all of it, and a candidate claiming to be is telling you something. Look for depth in one framework, real database competence, security as a habit rather than a checklist, and the judgement to know which tool a problem calls for.
Sample PHP developer profiles
Representative of the current bench. Ask Rita for live profiles matched to your framework, PHP version and shift.
Industries our PHP developers have served
Domain context shortens ramp-up. Where we have someone who has already shipped in your sector, they go to the top of the shortlist.
FAQs about hiring PHP developers in India
Profiles reach you within 48 hours of the brief. Interviews usually follow within two or three days, and a developer who clears them can start inside a week. The bench is pre-vetted, so those 48 hours are matching time rather than sourcing time.
Yes, and it is worth asking for explicitly. Core PHP means no framework: your own routing, data layer and templates. The filter matters because a Laravel-only developer is slow on a large core PHP system with no framework doing the work for them. Ask candidates how they would structure a new core PHP project today and listen for Composer, an autoloader, a single front controller and prepared statements.
Laravel has the deepest bench by a wide margin, followed by Symfony and CodeIgniter 3 and 4. We also place on Yii, CakePHP, Laminas or Zend, Slim and Phalcon, though those pools are thinner and we will say so rather than pretend otherwise. Outside Laravel and Symfony, a strong general PHP engineer typically picks up the framework in a week or two.
Dedicated PHP developers start from $960/mo all-in, covering recruitment, vetting, payroll, statutory compliance, HR, equipment and workspace. The figure rises with seniority and framework depth. We publish the starting anchor rather than a full rate card because the right number depends on those variables; ask Rita or use Build Your Team for the complete card.
Yes, and it is one of the most common bounded engagements we run. The work covers deprecated functions, removed extensions such as the old mysql_* family, dependencies pinned to versions that no longer install, and the stricter string-to-number comparison rules in PHP 8 that quietly change behaviour in old code. It has a clear finish line, which makes it a good first engagement if you want to test working with us.
PHP runs on the server, so strictly every PHP developer is a backend developer. What people usually mean by frontend PHP is someone who also writes the Blade or Twig templates, HTML, CSS and light JavaScript that PHP renders, which is a real and common profile. What it is not is a React or Vue engineer; those skill sets diverged years ago. If you need a component-driven single-page front end, pair the PHP developer with a React developer.
Yes, and API work is where we place the largest share of Laravel and Symfony developers. That covers JSON endpoints for a mobile app or JavaScript front end, authentication, webhook receivers, third-party and payment integrations, queued jobs and scheduled tasks. Modern PHP behind PHP-FPM and Nginx handles serious traffic perfectly well.
Yes. Teams run from two to six people with a lead who owns delivery and code review inside the pod. Developer plus QA is the most cost-effective first expansion and the one clients most often skip; DevOps becomes worthwhile once several people deploy the same application. Start smaller than you think and add seats monthly.
A three-hour build with an endpoint requiring validation, a query that must not become an N+1, and a supplied file containing one injectable query and one unescaped output. Security is deliberately not mentioned in the brief, so what a candidate notices unprompted is the signal. A senior engineer then reviews the submission live and changes a requirement to see how they reason.
Regularly, and it is a distinct skill from greenfield work. We filter for developers with the temperament to read before rewriting, and on legacy engagements we require an architecture note committed to your repository within the first fortnight so the knowledge is not held in one head.
Mostly it affects cost rather than quality. Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad carry a salary premium because global capability centres compete for the same people, while strong PHP engineers work from tier-two cities at lower cost with no difference in remote output. We match on framework depth and shift rather than postcode unless you have a specific reason to need a city.
It depends on the shift you choose. A standard 09:30-18:30 IST day gives a UK client 4-5 hours and a US Eastern client none at all. A 13:30-22:30 IST shift covers a full UK day, 18:30-03:30 IST covers a full US Eastern day, and 05:30-14:30 IST gives Sydney seven hours. US Pacific needs a night shift for live overlap, or a follow-the-sun model where queued work is finished before you start.
Free replacement inside the first 30 days, with a documented handover required on exit. Beyond 30 days, 30 days notice ends the engagement with no severance exposure on your side.
You do, from the first commit. IP assignment and an NDA are signed before any developer is introduced to a client, not at the end of a project.
Get matched with a PHP developer in 48 hours
Tell us the framework, the PHP version and the market you need overlap with. Profiles and the full rate card come back within two working days.