Full Stack Developer

Salary: $90,000 – $120,000 per year

Job description:

About Code Squirrel

We're a Brisbane-based software development and AI consulting agency, and we love what we do. Since 2019 we've been building web, mobile, cloud and integration projects for clients in healthcare, legal, construction and professional services, plus a few products of our own. There are around 30 of us across Australia and the Philippines.

We're a passionate, enthusiastic bunch who get genuinely excited about good code and new tech. A lot of us are gamers, and most of us would call each other friends rather than just colleagues. We're looking for someone who'll fit right in: good at what they do, keen to keep getting better, and good company along the way.

On the work side, we do custom software, app development, systems integration, code audits, SaaS and AI enablement. That increasingly means building AI features into client systems as well as using AI tools to ship faster ourselves.

The role

You'll be a hands-on Laravel developer working across client projects and internal products. You'll take a feature from spec to production, covering the back end, front end, tests and deployment. Some of the work is new builds, some is extending and fixing existing codebases, and some is auditing and improving code other people wrote.

We expect you to work independently, own your tickets, and tell us early when something's off.

What you'll be doing

• Building and maintaining Laravel applications end to end: APIs, admin panels, background jobs, integrations and front ends

• Building modern front ends in React and Next.js

• Working on a large existing project that includes a significant jQuery front end, which you'll be extending and maintaining alongside more modern parts of the stack

• Turning specs and tickets into working, tested code, and pushing back when a spec doesn't make sense

• Designing database schemas and writing efficient queries, and fixing the slow ones

• Integrating with third-party systems such as payment gateways, CRMs, Microsoft 365/SharePoint, and client APIs

• Building AI-powered features into client applications

• Using AI coding agents in your daily workflow, and reviewing their output as carefully as you'd review a colleague's

• Writing automated tests and keeping CI pipelines green

• Reviewing teammates' merge requests and having your own reviewed

• Contributing to code audits of client and third-party codebases

• Keeping your tickets updated in Jira and committing often with ticket references

Experience we're looking for

4+ years of commercial software development, with at least 3 of those spent mainly on Laravel. By commercial, we mean you've worked in a team, on production systems with real users, real deadlines and real consequences when things break.

A note on AI and experience. We're big fans of AI tools and use them every day, and we'd expect you to as well. For this role, though, we need someone whose foundations were built through hands-on industry experience. That experience means you’re not dependant on AI tools, and spot when an AI agent has confidently got it wrong, or steer it towards a better way based on your experience. AI should make you faster, not stand in for knowing the craft.

Required skillsBack end

• Modern PHP (8.2+): strict types, enums, readonly properties, and other current language features

• Current Laravel: Eloquent, queues and jobs, events, policies and gates, form requests, API resources, scheduling and caching

• MySQL/MariaDB: schema design, indexing, query optimisation, and migrations on live data

• REST API design and consumption

• Comfortable working in legacy codebases, including vanilla PHP and older Laravel versions, and upgrading them safely

Front end

• Strong JavaScript and TypeScript

• React, plus real project experience with Next.js

• jQuery. You'll need to be genuinely comfortable here, not just able to read it. One of our larger projects has a substantial jQuery front end, and you'll be working in it regularly.

• Tailwind CSS

• Inertia or Livewire is a bonus - we use them in some projects

Testing and quality

• Writing meaningful tests with Pest or PHPUnit (feature and unit)

• Static analysis and code style (PHPStan/Larastan, Pint)

• A working knowledge of OWASP Top 10 and secure coding in Laravel

Tooling and DevOps

• Git, including branching, rebasing, and writing clear merge requests

• GitLab CI/CD pipelines

• Containerised local development (Docker or Podman)

• Comfortable on the Linux command line

AI development

This is a core part of the role, not a nice extra.

Building with AI

• Integrating LLMs into Laravel apps

• Tool/function calling, structured outputs, and streaming responses

• RAG: chunking, embeddings, vector search, and checking whether retrieval is actually helping

• Building or consuming MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers

• Handling the practical stuff: token and cost management, rate limits, retries, timeouts, fallbacks, and graceful failure

• Taking privacy and data handling seriously, which means knowing what client data can and can't go to which model

Building with AI tools

• Daily, effective use of agentic coding tools (e.g. Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, or similar)

• Writing good project context for agents (AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md, clear task briefs) so the output is useful on the first pass

• Reviewing AI-generated code critically. You own every line you commit, whoever or whatever wrote it

• Working within Code Squirrel's AI Usage Policy - using only the approved tools (Claude and our own in-house AI)

Nice to have

• Filament

• Laravel Horizon, Reverb, Octane

• Kubernetes (we run K3s) or similar container orchestration

• React Native

• Node.js

• Microsoft Graph / SharePoint integration

• WordPress/WooCommerce

• Code auditing or security review experience

• Running or evaluating local/self-hosted LLMs

How we work

Communication.

Half the team is in the Philippines, so clear written communication matters a lot. You'll post daily standups in Mattermost, keep ticket comments detailed enough that someone else could pick up your work, and flag blockers early. If you don't know something, ask. Nobody here will think less of you for it, but they will if you sit on a problem for two days.

Delivery.

Our projects run to set milestones, with parts of an application due on fixed dates. You'll need to estimate your own work honestly and hit what you commit to, or speak up early when you can't.

Process.

Agile, ticket-driven work through Jira and GitLab with merge request reviews on everything and automated QA/UAT environments for client testing.

Location and hours

This role is Brisbane-based and mostly remote. You'll need to live locally and have the right to work in Australia.

For your first two weeks, you'll be in our Brisbane office full-time. That's the best way to get to know the team, our codebases and how we work. After that, it's a minimum of one day a week in the office, and the rest of the week you can work from home. Wednesdays are our main in-office day, when most of the team is in.

Hours are full-time, standard Brisbane business hours, with some flexibility on start and finish times.

Confidentiality, security and sensitive content

You'll sign a confidentiality agreement when you start, because you'll have access to client systems and data. You'll also be expected to follow our security practices, including password management through our company vault, and to handle client data in line with our AI Usage Policy.

Because we work across a wide range of industries, some client projects involve sensitive material. Depending on the project, that could include medical or legal information, or content that is explicit or confronting. You'll need to be comfortable working with this kind of material professionally and discreetly when a project calls for it.

What we offer

Salary range up to $120,000 including super, leave, equipment, training budget/AI tool subscriptions, career progression, team events and gaming nights, etc.

How to apply

Send your CV, along with a link to your GitHub/GitLab or some code you're proud of, to careers@codesquirrel.com.au. Tell us in a few lines about a production problem you've dealt with and how you sorted it out, and how AI tools fit into your day-to-day work.

Our process: [short screening call → technical task or paired coding session → final interview].

Work Location: Hybrid remote in Springwood QLD 4127