Technical Project Lead (PHP/Laravel)

Job Description

Title: Technical Project Lead, Team Lead, Senior PHP Developer

Location: Irvine, CA (on-site)

Type: Contract

Requirements:

5+ years of hands on PHP development

2+ years recent Laravel experience

1+ years team management, project leadership

Linux environment experience

We are seeking a Technical Project Lead who combines hands-on PHP/Laravel development skills with strong leadership, operational ownership, and project coordination capabilities. This role is critical to managing a distributed team of contract developers while ensuring technical excellence and on-time delivery for web-based applications.

The Lead will work on-site at our Irvine, California location and function as the bridge between executive leadership and project-level technical teams.

This is a full-time engagement with the potential to grow into a broader CTO-level role over time, depending on performance.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and oversee multiple web application development projects, ensuring adherence to timelines, specifications, and standards.

• Standardize development on PHP + Laravel for future projects.

• Manage and monitor remote developers working inside independent LXD containers with public static IPs.

• Coordinate infrastructure support (e.g., container setup, IP assignments, system upgrades) — no direct sysadmin work required.

• Own project results without co-developing day-to-day code personally.

• Proactively solve technical issues and escalate where needed.

• Maintain lightweight monitoring and progress tracking with contractors.

• Enforce code delivery ownership: remote developers must deliver complete, working solutions.

Bonus/Preferred Skills

• Prior experience managing offshore or Upwork-based development teams.

• Familiarity with static IP networking setups and/or container orchestration.

• Experience with progress tracking tools (simple git-based logging, Notion, lightweight ticketing).

Full-time