Mid-Level Backend Developer

Salary: $95,000 – $110,000 per year

Backend Developer (PHP / Laravel)

Southport, Gold Coast QLD • Full-time • Technology

Join a growing national brand and help build the systems that keep our business moving.

East Coast Car Rentals is one of Australia's established car rental brands, with 14 locations across the country. Behind the scenes, we're investing heavily in technology and building modern platforms in-house on AWS. It's an exciting time to join our software engineering team as we continue to develop the systems, integrations and services that power our operations and customer experience.

We're looking for a Backend Developer who enjoys solving complex problems, building reliable APIs and creating scalable systems that make a real difference. Working closely with the Head of Software Engineering and collaborating with frontend developers, you'll play a key role in developing the applications and integrations that support our customers and teams every day.

If you're technically curious, enjoy building well-structured solutions and take pride in delivering high-quality code, we'd love to hear from you.

What you'll do

• Build and enhance our Laravel-based backend applications and APIs.

• Design, develop and maintain scalable services that support business-critical systems.

• Create and optimise MySQL and Amazon Aurora database structures, queries and performance.

• Develop and maintain integrations with third-party platforms, including communication and operational systems.

• Build secure authentication and authorisation workflows across our applications.

• Write clean, maintainable and well-documented code that supports long-term growth.

• Participate in code reviews and contribute to backend development standards and best practices.

• Collaborate closely with frontend developers to define API requirements and deliver reliable integrations.

• Help deliver new technology initiatives that improve both customer and operational outcomes.

What you'll bring

• 2+ years commercial experience in a Backend Developer role within a collaborative software development environment.

• Strong PHP and Laravel development experience.

• Solid understanding of MySQL database design, optimisation and performance tuning.

• Experience designing and developing RESTful APIs.

• Experience with Laravel queues, events and background job processing.

• Knowledge of authentication and security patterns, including Sanctum, OAuth or JWT.

• Experience using Git, pull requests and code review processes.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a focus on reliability and maintainability.

• The ability to communicate effectively and work within a small, agile team.

Nice to have

• Experience with AWS services such as RDS, Aurora, S3 or SES.

• Experience integrating third-party APIs, including Twilio or similar communication platforms.

• Familiarity with PHPUnit, Pest or automated testing practices.

• Experience working with Docker and local development environments.

• Experience working with Jira and Bitbucket.

• Interest in modern AI-powered development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Cursor or Claude.

• Experience integrating payment gateways, inventory platforms or other external business systems.

What success looks like

• APIs are reliable, well-documented and easy for other developers to consume.

• Database changes are delivered safely and without production disruption.

• Third-party integrations are robust and handle failure scenarios gracefully.

• New features are delivered on time and support sprint commitments.

• Test coverage and code quality remain high as the platform evolves.

• Solutions are designed with security, scalability and long-term maintainability in mind.

Why East Coast Car Rentals

• Work on meaningful platforms that support a national operation across Australia.

• A modern technology environment with opportunities to influence architecture and development practices.

• A collaborative engineering team where your ideas and expertise are valued.

• A broad, hands-on role with genuine variety and visible impact.

• Opportunities to learn, grow and expand your technical capabilities.

• Based at our Corporate Southport head office on the Gold Coast.

How to apply

If this sounds like you, we'd love to hear from you. Please submit your Resume and a short Cover Letter telling us about a backend application, integration or API you've built, what challenges you faced, and what you learned from the experience.

East Coast Car Rentals is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and are committed to creating a diverse, inclusive and supportive workplace.