Lead PHP/Laravel Developer and Architect (CTO)

About the Company

This investor-backed technology company has built its own platform for creating personalised and interactive video at scale. Enterprise brands use it to send large numbers of individually tailored videos to their customers, with each video changing for the person watching it. The platform is live, in production and already delivering campaigns at significant scale.

The business serves enterprise clients internationally and runs its technology from Johannesburg. It is now focused entirely on personalised and interactive video, and is concentrating on growing recurring revenue across its core markets.

The team is small and works closely with the CEO and shareholders. This is the company's first CTO appointment, which makes it a rare chance for a strong developer to own a proven product and build the development team around it.

Job Overview

We are looking for a senior PHP/Laravel developer at architect level to take ownership of an established, live production platform. The role carries the company's first CTO title and reports to the CEO.

This is a hands-on development role first. You will write PHP/Laravel code every day, own the architecture of the platform and solve its hardest technical problems yourself. Alongside that, you will start the company's development team, hire your own PHP developers and grow the team as the business scales.

In the first three months you will take ownership of the platform, architecture and codebase, assess the technology and infrastructure, and set a technical roadmap tied to the company's commercial growth plans. By six months you will be leading measurable progress in scalability, performance, automation and AI capability, with your first hires in place.

Duties and Responsibilities

Development and Architecture

• Write, review and ship PHP/Laravel code daily.
• Take full technical ownership of the existing production platform, architecture and codebase.
• Design new features and services, including greenfield components where needed.
• Keep the platform stable, secure and scalable on AWS.
• Evolve the architecture and tech stack where there is a clear technical and commercial case.

 AI and Video

• Integrate and run AI/ML pipelines, LLMs and third-party AI technologies, including avatar and voice, in production.
• Explore new generative AI and video rendering technologies, and prototype new features with the product and creative teams.

 Building the Team

• Start the development team and hire your own PHP/Laravel developers.
• Mentor and lead the team as it grows, while staying hands-on.
• Put development processes in place that support growth without disrupting live client delivery.
• Own the technical roadmap with the CEO.

 Client Engagement

• Explain the platform to enterprise clients and support integrations into their workflows.
• Turn client feedback into technical priorities.

Minimum Requirements

• Strong senior PHP and Laravel development experience, and still fully hands-on.
• Software architecture experience at architect level, owning the design of a production platform.
• Greenfield development experience: has designed and built a platform or product from the ground up.
• Team lead or management experience, including hiring or growing developers.
• Production SaaS experience, including APIs, integrations, cloud infrastructure (AWS) and databases.
• Practical experience integrating AI/ML pipelines, LLMs or third-party AI technologies into production applications.

Nice-To-Have

• Previous experience as a CTO, Head of Development or Head of Engineering.
• Client-facing experience, presenting technical concepts and advising on integrations.
• Video technology experience, such as streaming, rendering or video infrastructure.
• js or React, and Python.
• Docker and Kubernetes.
• MLOps or LLMOps in production.
• GCP as well as AWS.
• Start-up or scale-up experience.

Personal Attributes

• A builder who still loves writing code and is comfortable in a small, lean team.
• Ready to hire and lead developers without stepping away from the code.
• Commercially minded, and ties technology decisions to business results.
• Takes ownership and improves what exists rather than starting again.

How to Apply?

If you are a senior PHP/Laravel developer with architect-level experience who is ready to build and lead your own team, we would like to hear from you.

Send your CV to charne@skillzpage.com

(If you do not hear from us within 2 weeks, please consider your application unsuccessful.)