Laravel Developer UK | Builds, Takeovers & Upgrades

Laravel development for applications that matter

Laravel is a good choice for business applications: it is productive, well documented and has a published release and support policy. But a Laravel application is only as good as the decisions around it: how data is modelled, how failures are handled in queues, how it is tested, and whether it can be upgraded without drama. That is where a senior developer earns their keep.

I am Oliver Burton, a UK freelance PHP and Laravel developer based near Ibstock, Leicestershire. This page covers Laravel work in general. For the commercial details of a freelance arrangement, see freelance Laravel developer; for support of live applications, see Laravel support.

What I work on

New applications. Internal operations tools, customer portals, APIs for mobile apps and partners, SaaS billing on Stripe.
Takeovers. Applications built by someone who has left, an agency that has closed, or a fast AI-assisted build that now needs an owner. See taking over an existing Laravel project.
Upgrades. Moving across one or several major versions with tests first. See Laravel upgrades, and PHP upgrade for the runtime underneath.
Performance. Slow pages, heavy reports and queues that never catch up. See performance optimisation.
Integrations. ERPs, payment providers, WooCommerce and other business systems. See integrations.

What to look for in a UK Laravel developer

Whoever you hire, these are worth checking:

Production experience. Can they explain how they monitor failed jobs, roll back a bad deploy, and rotate a leaked key?
Upgrade history. Have they moved a real application across major versions, and how did they deal with packages that were no longer maintained?
Testing habits. Do they write tests around money, permissions and data before changing them?
Comfort with inherited code. Most Laravel work is on applications someone else started.
Written communication. Proposals, pull requests and handover notes you can actually read.
Ownership. Code in your repository, accounts in your name.

If a developer cannot answer those questions clearly, the risk is yours, whatever their day rate.

Typical stack

Laravel and PHP 8.x, MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL, Redis with Horizon for queues, Sanctum for APIs, Livewire, Inertia and Vue on the front end or an existing React or Angular application, Pest or PHPUnit for tests, and Laravel Forge, Envoyer or your own CI for deploys.

Proof, without invented numbers

Published case studies are anonymised and focus on outcomes. They include a B2B ordering portal on a live ERP and a training platform that creates Microsoft Teams meetings and certificates. There are no star ratings or client logos on this site, because they cannot be checked.

UK-wide, remote by default

Work is remote and in UK hours. For businesses in Leicestershire and the East Midlands, on-site days are easy to arrange. To start, see how hiring works or send a brief using the form below.

Process

Share the brief and repo composer.json alone says a lot: Laravel version, packages, PHP constraint.
Written assessment What is healthy, what is risky, what should happen first.
Agreed scope Build, takeover, upgrade or retainer: one at a time, written down.
Delivery with tests Pest or PHPUnit around the risky parts before they change.

Questions that usually come up

How do I check a Laravel developer is any good?

Ask them to talk through an upgrade they have done, how they handle failed queue jobs in production, and how they would take over an application with no documentation. Specific answers about tests, deploys and rollbacks matter more than a list of packages.

Which Laravel versions do you work with?

Current releases for new work, and older versions for takeovers and upgrades, including multi-version jumps. See Laravel upgrades.

Do you build front-ends as well?

Yes: Blade, Livewire, Inertia with Vue, or an existing React or Angular application. Large design-led front-end projects are better suited to a specialist alongside.

Can you deploy and host the application?

Yes, typically with Laravel Forge or the CI and servers you already have. Hosting accounts stay in your name.

Qualification

Discuss your Laravel application

Name, work email, and a short description of the application is enough. No discovery call theatre before I know whether I can actually help.

UK businesses with a real Laravel (or legacy PHP) application
Build, support, rescue, upgrade or integration work
Reply from Oliver Burton, usually within one working day