Full Stack Developer

Role Title: Full Stack Developer

Primary Stack: PHP, WordPress, MySQL, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, REST APIs, Linux, Git/GitHub

Reports to: Director of Operations

Location: MediaCityUK, Salford / Manchester (Hybrid: 3 days studio, 2 days WFH)

Salary: Competitive (Dependent on Experience)

Job Type: Full-time, Permanent

Purpose of the Role

The Full Stack Developer is responsible for delivering robust, scalable, secure, and maintainable digital platforms for Carbon Creative’s clients and internal projects. This role combines strong back-end PHP and WordPress engineering with confident front-end development, database knowledge, API integration experience, and practical server-side understanding.

The role exists to ensure that Carbon’s digital work is technically well-built, efficient to maintain, and aligned with client objectives. The Full Stack Developer will be expected to contribute across the full project lifecycle, from technical scoping and architecture through to development, testing, deployment support, optimisation, and ongoing improvement.

In an employee-owned agency, the Full Stack Developer is expected to work collaboratively, share knowledge openly, support the wider digital team, and help raise the standard of technical delivery across Carbon.

Key Responsibilities

Full Stack Development
Build, maintain, and improve websites, web applications, and digital platforms using PHP, WordPress, MySQL, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and related technologies.

WordPress Engineering
Develop custom WordPress themes, plugins, integrations, and functionality to a professional standard, using WordPress best practices rather than relying solely on off-the-shelf templates or page builders.

PHP Application Development
Write clean, secure, efficient, and maintainable PHP code, including work with modern PHP frameworks such as Laravel, Symfony, or comparable MVC-based frameworks.

Front-End Development
Create responsive, accessible, and well-structured front-end interfaces using HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and modern build tooling where appropriate.

Database Development
Design, query, and maintain MySQL databases, including writing SQL statements, understanding relational data structures, and supporting performance-conscious database development.

API Integration
Develop and maintain integrations with REST APIs, third-party systems, internal services, and client platforms.

Version Control & Development Workflow
Use Git and GitHub effectively, including branching, pull requests, code reviews, merge management, and collaborative development workflows.

Server & Environment Awareness
Work confidently with Linux command-line environments and understand web server configuration principles for platforms such as Nginx and Apache.

Code Quality & Maintainability
Produce clean, testable, documented, and maintainable code that can be understood and extended by other developers.

Technical Problem Solving
Investigate bugs, performance issues, integration problems, and technical blockers, applying structured problem-solving and clear communication.

Collaboration & Knowledge Sharing
Work closely with designers, project managers, DevOps, QA, account managers, and other developers to deliver high-quality digital work. Share technical knowledge and contribute to continuous improvement across the team.

Security, Performance & Best Practice
Apply appropriate security, performance, accessibility, and compliance considerations, including GDPR-aware development practices where relevant.

Essential Requirements

Candidates must clearly demonstrate the following experience to be considered technically suitable for the role.

• Minimum of 5+ years of professional software or web development experience, with PHP as a primary or major language during that period.
  Clarification: Hobby projects, personal websites, short bootcamps, internships, or academic-only experience should not be counted toward the 5-year requirement unless supported by substantial commercial delivery experience.
• Strong commercial experience writing PHP for production websites or applications.
• Candidates should be able to evidence experience with structured, maintainable PHP code rather than only small template edits or basic CMS configuration
• Minimum of 5+ years of professional WordPress development experience.
• This must include genuine development work such as custom themes, custom plugins, hooks, filters, custom post types, advanced fields, WordPress APIs, migrations, performance work, security considerations, or complex integrations.
• Commercial experience with at least one PHP framework or comparable MVC-based PHP architecture. Examples include Laravel, Symfony, Slim, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, or similar.
• Familiarity with Git version control, ideally including GitHub-based workflows. Candidates should understand branching, commits, merges, pull requests, and collaborative version control.
• Knowledge of MySQL and relational database principles. Candidates must be able to write SQL statements, understand joins, filtering, ordering, relationships, and basic performance considerations.
• Experience working with REST APIs, either consuming third-party APIs or developing API endpoints.
• Practical experience using the Linux command line. This should include working with SSH, file permissions, logs, deployments, package tools, command-line debugging, or server-side development tasks.
• Strong understanding of HTML5, CSS3, semantic markup, responsive layouts, and cross-device development.
• Experience using npm and Node.js in a front-end or build-tooling context. Examples include package management, compiling assets, running build scripts, using Vite, Webpack, Gulp, Sass tooling, or similar workflows.
• Experience writing code that is maintainable, understandable, documented where appropriate, and suitable for team-based development.
• Experience configuring or working with web servers such as Nginx and Apache. This may include virtual hosts, rewrite rules, redirects, SSL configuration, PHP-FPM awareness, .htaccess, basic performance configuration, or debugging server-level issues.

Desirable Requirements

The following are not mandatory but should strengthen a candidate’s suitability.

• 10+ years of PHP development experience or equivalent senior-level depth in PHP architecture, maintainability, and troubleshooting.
• Experience working with AWS services or AWS-hosted environments.
• Good working knowledge of JavaScript beyond basic snippets.
• Experience with frameworks or libraries such as React, Vue, Angular, Alpine.js, or similar.
• Familiarity with Docker or other containerised development and deployment environments.
• Good knowledge of Debian-based Linux operating systems.
• Knowledge of caching systems such as Redis, Memcached, object caching, page caching, CDN behaviour, or application-level caching strategies.
• Proven experience designing applications that are scalable, maintainable, and structured for long-term support.
• Strong understanding of MVC architecture, object-oriented programming principles, and common design patterns.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated deployments, GitHub Actions, Bitbucket Pipelines, GitLab CI, or similar.
• Strong communication, structured thinking, and practical problem-solving skills, especially in agency or client-facing environments.

About Carbon Creative

Carbon Creative is an employee-owned creative and digital agency combining brand, design, motion and digital expertise to deliver work that creates meaningful commercial impact for our clients.

We are a process-led, collaborative agency with well-established systems, ways of working and EOS rhythms. Our best people thrive by understanding the Carbon way first, then helping us evolve it thoughtfully over time.

As an employee-owned business, every member of the team has a stake in the agency’s success. We value clarity, care, accountability, creativity and calm collaboration.