Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer

About the role

Kidsoft is looking for an exceptional Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer who can work confidently across the entire software development lifecycle—from understanding a customer problem through to design, development, testing, release and production support. This is not a narrow, ticket-based development role. You will solve complex, meaningful problems across a large, multi-tenant SaaS platform used every day by childcare services, educators and families. You will work with payment processing, government integrations, bulk data operations and more than 10TB of accumulated data.

Key responsibilities

• Translate customer and business requirements into reliable, practical system functionality.
• Identify contradictions, risks, edge cases and better solutions before development begins.
• Design, build, test, release and support features across the backend, frontend and database.
• Develop and maintain PHP applications using Laravel and established in-house framework.
• Build modern user experiences using React and TypeScript while supporting existing JavaScript and jQuery applications.
• Write and optimise advanced PostgreSQL queries involving aggregations, window functions, reporting and high-volume data updates.
• Work on financial transactions, payment gateways, billing processes and sensitive customer data.
• Diagnose difficult production issues across application code, databases, infrastructure and Linux environments.
• Review code, improve engineering standards and help other developers solve complex problems.
• Lead projects from initial investigation through to successful delivery and ongoing support.

About you

• At least five years of professional full-stack software development experience.
• Strong commercial experience with PHP and frameworks such as Laravel or Symfony.
• Advanced PostgreSQL and raw SQL skills. You must be comfortable working beyond an ORM when performance or complexity demands it.
• Experience with React and TypeScript, or comparable modern frontend frameworks.
• Strong knowledge of JavaScript, jQuery, HTML5 and CSS.
• Experience designing and supporting secure, high-performing relational databases.
• Excellent object-oriented design skills and practical knowledge of design patterns.
• Strong understanding of SOLID, DRY, KISS and YAGNI, including the judgement to know when they should not be applied rigidly.
• Strong Linux skills, including SSH, log analysis, process investigation and production troubleshooting.
• A working knowledge of Windows-based environments.

About us

Kidsoft is an established childcare technology business with ambitious plans for the future. You will work on software that genuinely matters, solving challenging technical problems that directly affect childcare services, educators and families. You will have direct access to senior leadership, experienced engineers and product specialists. Your ideas will be heard, your decisions will have an impact, and you will have the opportunity to influence the future architecture and direction of the platform.