Technical Lead (PHP, Laravel & Adobe Commerce)

Who are we?

A world where complexity is the only constant demands a new breed of company. Brave Bison is a different beast: a media, marketing and technology company purpose built for the digital era. 

Our universe is made up of award-winning business arms Brave Bison, Engage, SocialChain and MTM. And we’re underpinned by leading marketing training practice, MiniMBA, as well as our very own social-first media network who deliver monthly views in the billions for some of the biggest channels in sport and entertainment across YouTube, Snap, Meta and TikTok. 

We’re a global collective who live and breathe digital, working with some of the boldest brands in the world to capitalise on the complexity that defines the modern marketing landscape. 

Our mission

New platforms, new behaviours, new audiences, new trends, new technologies, new regulations—our clients’ worlds get more complex daily. Their agency partnerships shouldn’t. It’s our job to cut through the chaos, make the complex simple and navigate a clear path to growth for them. 

That’s why we make it our mission to capitalise on complexity for our clients—across consultancy, capability and execution—by crafting dynamic digital solutions that outpace tomorrow’s challenges. 

Our values

We’re a proudly diverse business comprised of deep specialists across social media, digital marketing and technology. Although our skills, backgrounds and beliefs may differ, we are united by four core shared values:

• Bold Curiosity.

We run at change and challenge convention because we love to push the boundaries of what the world thinks is possible. We champion discovery, go deep into our clients’ worlds and are always hungry to learn more about them, our specialisms and each other.

• Connected Clarity.

We are focused in our collaboration — joining the right dots between our clients, our partners and our herd of experts to deliver agile solutions at speed and scale. We set a shared ambition from the outset, are transparent at every stage and always strive to make the complex simple.

• Positive Encouragement.

We want to make working with us the best part of someone’s day. We lift one other up, find the fun in the day to day and are committed to ensuring everyone belongs.

• Constant Impact.

We believe in outcomes over outputs. We’re goal orientated, results driven and data led. We show up with passion every day. And we’re always honing our craft.

Brave Bison Commerce

With over 300 ecommerce projects and £2billion worth of transactions under our belt, we’ve designed and built hundreds of bespoke digital solutions for complex B2B, B2C, D2C and B2B2C companies.

Whether we’re modernising a monolith platform or building a fully composable solution, we ensure our clients are ready to meet customers anywhere – online, mobile, in-store or on social – unlocking a brave new world of possibility.

Job Specification

We are looking for a Technical Lead with deep expertise in PHP, Laravel and Adobe Commerce (Magento) to join Brave Bison Commerce. You will set the technical direction on client projects and lead the engineers who deliver them. This is a client-facing role: you will run discovery work, explain technical decisions to stakeholders at every level and confidently recommend improvements and upgrades that help our clients get more from their platforms. If you enjoy hands-on engineering as much as shaping solutions with clients, we would love to hear from you.

Key Responsibilities:

Technical leadership

• Lead and mentor a team of PHP developers, setting coding standards, reviewing code and supporting their professional growth.
• Own the technical design of Adobe Commerce and Laravel solutions, from architecture and integrations through to deployment.
• Stay hands-on, writing high-quality code and stepping into complex problems where your experience makes the biggest difference.
• Plan and estimate technical work with project managers, keeping delivery on track and raising risks early.
• Champion good engineering practice, including automated testing, CI/CD, performance optimisation and security.
• Oversee platform upgrades, patching and migrations, including Magento 2 version upgrades and third-party extension management.

Clients and growth

• Act as the senior technical point of contact for clients, joining calls and workshops and building trusted relationships.
• Lead technical discoveries: auditing existing platforms, gathering requirements and turning them into clear solution designs, estimates and roadmaps.
• Identify opportunities to improve clients’ platforms, such as upgrades, performance work, new features or integrations, and present them as well-reasoned recommendations and proposals.
• Work with account and sales teams to scope and support upsell opportunities and new business pitches.
• Translate complex technical topics into plain language for non-technical stakeholders.

Qualifications:

• Significant commercial experience as a PHP developer (typically 7+ years), including time in a lead or senior role.
• Extensive hands-on experience with Adobe Commerce / Magento 2, including custom module development, theming, checkout, performance tuning and upgrades.
• Strong Laravel experience, including building APIs, services and standalone applications that integrate with ecommerce platforms.
• Experience integrating ecommerce platforms with third-party systems such as ERP, PIM, OMS, payment gateways and search.
• Proven experience leading development teams, including code review, mentoring and technical planning.
• Confidence in client-facing situations, with experience running discovery sessions, workshops or technical presentations.
• A commercial mindset, with the ability to spot improvements and upgrades and clearly explain their value to clients.
• Solid working knowledge of MySQL, Git, Composer and cloud or hosting environments (for example Adobe Commerce Cloud or AWS).
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Nice-to-Have:

• Power BI experience, for example building reports or dashboards.
• Adobe Commerce developer or architect certifications.
• Experience with Hyvä Themes or headless and composable frontends.
• Agency or consultancy experience working across multiple clients.
• Familiarity with other ecommerce platforms such as Shopify Plus or BigCommerce.

Finally, we’re proud and committed to being an equal opportunity workplace, providing equal opportunities for all and treating all existing employees and all job applicants in the same way, regardless of their age, disability, gender, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity status and marital & civil partnership status