Senior Full-Stack Engineer

We build the platform that schools, universities, charities and alumni communities use to nurture and grow their communities - and we do it with AI woven into how we work, not bolted on afterwards. You’ll join a small, senior engineering team shipping new features on a live product while also modernising it onto a current stack (Laravel, Vue 3, AWS). The platform migration is a significant part of the work, but it’s one thread among several: there’s a steady flow of new capability to design and build, and the balance shifts towards that over time as the rebuild completes. This is hands‑on, full‑stack work with a high degree of autonomy and visible impact.

We’re looking for someone who has shipped production web applications for years, has strong opinions held loosely, and treats AI tooling as a genuine multiplier rather than a novelty. Experienced here means you’ve owned features end to end, kept things running in production, mentored people more junior than you, and developed the judgement to know when a clever solution is the wrong one.

What you’ll do

• Design, build and ship new features across the stack – Laravel/PHP on the backend, Vue 3 on the frontend – alongside modernising existing functionality as part of an ongoing migration off legacy code.
• Work on substantial domains such as payments (Stripe, GoCardless, PayPal), data import pipelines, and embedded front‑end widgets, owning the technical design as well as the implementation.
• Use AI tooling fluently as part of your daily workflow – drafting, refactoring, reviewing, and orchestrating delegated tasks – while exercising the judgement to verify, correct and reject its output.
• Contribute to architectural decisions, code review, and the technical standards that keep a growing codebase healthy.
• Collaborate closely with product and other engineers to turn ambiguous problems into shipped, well‑tested software.
• Take real ownership of reliability – observability, sensible alerting, and seeing issues through to resolution rather than handing them off.

Our stack and environment

• Backend: PHP, Laravel 13 (migrating from a legacy CodeIgniter application).
• Frontend: Vue 3, Tailwind CSS, PrimeVue, Vite.
• Testing: A strong testing culture – PHPUnit and Pest on the backend, Playwright for end‑to‑end coverage.
• Infrastructure: AWS – containerised on ECS/Fargate, with infrastructure defined as code using CDK. Sentry for error tracking.
• Ways of working: AI‑native development throughout the SDLC, including agentic tooling and AI‑assisted orchestration of routine work.
• Architecture: Strangler‑fig migration, micro‑frontend widgets, and a domain‑driven approach to complex areas like payments and data import.

What we’re looking for (essential)

• Several years of professional experience building and maintaining production web applications full‑stack.
• Strong PHP, ideally with a modern framework (Laravel preferred; we’ll happily talk to strong Symfony or other‑framework engineers who can pick it up).
• Solid commercial experience with Vue (Vue 3 / Composition API ideal) and modern front‑end tooling.
• Hands‑on experience deploying and running applications on AWS, ideally in a containerised environment (ECS/Fargate) with infrastructure as code (CDK or similar).
• Demonstrable fluency with AI coding tools, and – just as importantly – the discipline to use them well: prompting effectively, reviewing output critically, and knowing where they help and where they don’t.
• A genuine commitment to testing as part of how you build, not an afterthought – hands‑on experience with tools like PHPUnit, Pest and Playwright, and the judgement to know what’s worth covering and how.
• A pragmatic approach to testing, with an instinct for where coverage genuinely protects you.
• The ability to work in a legacy codebase without being paralysed by it.

Nice to have

• Experience with payment integrations (Stripe, GoCardless, PayPal) and the regulatory edges that come with them.
• Experience with large‑scale migrations or strangler‑fig rebuilds.
• Familiarity with micro‑frontend patterns and CSS isolation in embedded contexts.
• Experience building or operating AI agent / orchestration workflows.
• SaaS or membership/community platform background.

How we work – and what we value

• Ownership and accountability. You see things through. When something breaks, you don’t wait to be asked – and you don’t quietly hope someone else noticed.
• Direct, kind communication. You can disagree well, give and take feedback without drama, and say “I’m not sure” when you aren’t.
• Pragmatism over purity. You ship value and make sound trade‑offs rather than chasing the perfect abstraction.
• Curiosity and adaptability. A genuinely fast‑moving stack and AI landscape means the answer that was right last quarter may not be right now, and you’re energised rather than threatened by that.
• Care for the team. You make the people around you better – through review, mentoring, and the standards you hold.
• Testing as a default. Well‑tested code is simply how we work here. You write tests as part of building, and you help keep our coverage meaningful rather than box‑ticking.
• Sustainable pace. We want people who do excellent work over years, not who burn bright and burn out.

What we offer

• Salary: Competitive, with an offer based on what skills and experience you bring to the team.
• 24 days annual holiday allowance + UK bank holidays & a bonus day‑off at Christmas.
• Supportive of your professional development with an individual learning budget & supportive hours flex around learning.
• Hybrid / remote arrangements and options to flexible core hours to suit your working style & preference.
• Regular team meet‑ups, lunches & events to join & network.
• Opportunity to be selected for co‑works in London, Lisbon + other options to travel to meet the global customer base/ team.
• A small senior team where your work is visible and your decisions matter.
• A modern stack and a mandate to work in genuinely AI‑native ways.

How to apply

Please send your CV to work@toucantech.com with a couple of sentences about why you’re interested in the role. Unfortunately we are not able to sponsor foreign working visas for this role, so you will need to have the right to work in the UK.