Senior PHP Developer – Symfony Migration & Modernization; Remote

We are looking to hire a candidate with the mentioned skill sets and experience for one of our clients within the pharmaceutical Industry. This is a contracting and REMOTE role

We are seeking an experienced Full Stack Software Developer (PHP/Symfony) to support the modernization of a business-critical laboratory reporting application from legacy Symfony 2.x to the latest supported version of Symfony.

The ideal candidate will have strong hands-on experience with PHP application development, legacy application modernization, PHP version upgrades, Symfony framework migrations, Composer dependency management, relational database integration, and Linux-based deployment environments.

This role involves working closely with internal development and business teams to document existing functionality, modernize application code, develop and execute regression tests, troubleshoot migration issues, and validate integrations with databases and supporting systems.

• Develop, maintain, and modernize enterprise PHP applications.
• Upgrade legacy PHP applications from PHP 5.x to modern PHP 8.x versions.
• Identify and resolve deprecated functions, incompatible language features, and outdated dependencies.
• Refactor legacy code while preserving existing business functionality.
• Apply object-oriented programming, exception handling, and application design principles.

• Lead or support migration of legacy Symfony applications, particularly Symfony 2.x or 3.x to modern Symfony versions.
• Work with Symfony controllers, services, dependency injection, routing, configuration, event listeners, and service containers.
• Replace deprecated or removed Symfony components and bundles.
• Assess migration complexity, identify breaking changes, and develop practical migration strategies.
• Manage Composer dependencies and resolve PHP package compatibility issues.

• Integrate PHP/Symfony applications with relational databases, including Oracle.
• Develop, troubleshoot, and optimize SQL queries and application-level data access.
• Work with Doctrine ORM and DBAL, including legacy implementations.
• Maintain database functionality and ensure data integrity throughout application modernization.
• Troubleshoot database connectivity, driver compatibility, transactions, and query performance.

• Analyze existing applications with limited or outdated documentation.
• Trace application workflows across controllers, services, databases, and external dependencies.
• Identify undocumented business rules, hidden dependencies, and compatibility risks.
• Troubleshoot authentication, authorization, sessions, routing, file permissions, logging, and error handling.
• Maintain production application stability while implementing necessary changes.

• Develop and execute functional and regression tests during application migrations.
• Establish baseline application behavior before implementing changes.
• Validate that modernized functionality produces results equivalent to the legacy application.
• Investigate, document, and resolve migration-related defects.
• Perform automated testing using PHPUnit and manual testing where automated coverage is limited.
  
  Validate database results, laboratory reporting workflows, and system integrations.

• Deploy and support PHP applications in Linux-based environments.
• Work with Apache or Nginx web servers.
• Troubleshoot PHP runtime configurations, extensions, file permissions, environment variables, and application logs.
• Utilize Docker or other container technologies.
• Support Composer-based build and deployment processes.
• Manage environment-specific configurations and deployment activities.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Bioinformatics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong professional experience in PHP application development and enterprise application modernization.
• Hands-on experience migrating Symfony 2.x to modern Symfony versions.
• Experience upgrading PHP 5.x to PHP 8.x.
• Strong knowledge of Symfony architecture and Composer dependency management.
• Experience with Doctrine ORM and DBAL.
• Strong SQL skills and Oracle database integration experience.
• Experience with legacy JavaScript, jQuery, HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap.
• Hands-on…