Laravel Backend Tech-Lead

The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) is a nonprofit organization that provides high-quality assessment products, services, and research for the benefit and protection of the public and the legal profession. We assist state courts and licensing authorities with fulfilling their responsibility to determine minimal competence for entry to the legal profession.

NCBE is committed to fostering a welcoming environment that values respect and collaboration. The organization provides competitive salary and benefits, flexible schedules, remote work options, and professional development opportunities. NCBE’s headquarters is based in Madison, Wisconsin, a dynamic community with exceptional amenities.

We are looking for a true Laravel aficionado—someone deeply embedded in the Laravel community, passionate about modern PHP backend development, and a leader in mentoring and managing backend teams. This role is ideal for an experienced Laravel developer who not only writes exceptional Laravel code but also leads teams, mentors developers, and oversees hiring, onboarding, and people management for backend developers and contractors.

This position is a blend of technical leadership (70%) and hands-on coding (30%), ensuring the design, scalability, and performance of Laravel-powered APIs and backend services, while also managing team growth and backend strategy.

What You’ll Be Doing:

✅ Hands-on Laravel development (30%) – actively coding, optimizing, and implementing best practices.
✅ Backend leadership & management responsibilities (70%) – sizing and estimating features and epics, mentoring, onboarding, and ensuring high-quality engineering.
✅ Shaping Laravel best practices – bringing cutting-edge Laravel knowledge into the team.
✅ Hiring and managing developers – ensuring smooth onboarding and team alignment.
✅ Collaboration – working closely with Product, UX/UI, Front-end, DevOps, and DBA teams to build efficient and maintainable solutions.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:      

Laravel Development & Technical Leadership (70%)

• Architect, develop, and maintain scalable Laravel backend services and APIs.
• Ensure database optimization, efficient data modeling, and high-performance MySQL queries.
• Implement authentication and authorization mechanisms (OAuth, JWT, AWS Cognito).
• Design and implement event-driven architectures and asynchronous processing.
• Conduct code reviews to maintain high-quality, secure, and efficient Laravel code.
• Drive backend work estimates and ensure feasibility.
• Ensure application security by following best practices in encryption, data protection, and API security.
• Participate in Agile ceremonies (sprint planning, stand-ups, demos, retrospectives).

Hands-on Laravel Coding (30%)

• Actively contribute to Laravel-based API development, integrations, and performance optimizations.
• Develop and test key backend components ensuring scalability and efficiency.
• Troubleshoot and optimize slow queries, API bottlenecks, and background job processing.
• Stay up to date with Laravel community trends and advocate for modern PHP best practices.

Team Management (3+ Years Required)

• Hire, onboard, and manage contractors and full-time developers for backend development.
• Act as an HR liaison, ensuring proper documentation, onboarding processes, and team alignment.
• Mentor and develop junior developers, fostering a growth-driven team culture.
• Establish and refine Laravel best practices and ensure they are embedded in the team’s workflow.
• Oversee developer performance reviews and career progression plans.

Required Qualifications:

• 5+ years of hands-on experience with Laravel PHP (this is a Laravel-first role).
• 3+ years of experience in hiring, onboarding, and mentoring backend developers.
• Active participation in the Laravel community—whether through GitHub contributions, Laravel meetups, blog posts, or other engagement.
• Proven experience in RESTful API design and third-party service integrations.
• Strong MySQL database design and query optimization skills.
• Experience with Redis, queues, and background job processing using SQS.
• Deep expertise in Laravel Eloquent ORM, Service Providers, Middleware, and Event Broadcasting.
• Knowledge of authentication and authorization best practices (OAuth, JWT, API tokens).
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions) and automated testing.
• Familiarity with AWS services, including Aurora MySQL, S3, SQS, Elasticsearch, Redis, and ECS.
• Excellent communication, problem-solving, and team leadership skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with GraphQL, WebSockets, or real-time event-driven architectures.
• Knowledge of Docker and AWS ECS for containerized deployments.
• Previous team leadership experience in backend development.
• Familiarity with GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or other CI/CD automation tools.
• AWS Certifications.

If you’re a seasoned Laravel backend developer with leadership experience, deeply engaged in the Laravel community, and excited to contribute hands-on while mentoring a team, we’d love to hear from you! 

The Developer may work remotely. NCBE will consider applicants from the following states: FL, IA, IL, IN, MA, MD, ME, MI, MO, MN, NC, NE, NJ, NM, NV, OK, PA, TX, WA, and WI.

Why Join Us?

🔥 Work in a Laravel-first environment—bring your expertise and help shape best practices.
💻 Blend leadership with hands-on coding—keep your technical skills sharp while mentoring.
📈 Directly impact the team—help hire, onboard, and mentor top Laravel talent.
🚀 Collaborate in a modern tech environment—AWS, CI/CD, scalable API architecture.
🌍 Remote work with a competitive salary and strong career growth potential.

Mission

NCBE promotes fairness, integrity, and best practices in admission to the legal profession for the benefit and protection of the public. We serve admission authorities, courts, the legal education community, and candidates by providing high-quality

• assessment products, services, and research;
• character investigations; and
• informational and educational resources and programs.

EEO Statement
NCBE is proud to be an equal employment opportunity organization. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunity to all applicants and employees regardless of their race, color, national origin, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, creed, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, genetic information, protected veteran status, military service, arrest/conviction record, or any status protected by applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations.

Please note that applicants may be contacted via email throughout the hiring process. We suggest that you add BambooHR (@bamboohr.com and @app.bamboohr.com) to your Approved/Safe Sender list so that email notifications are delivered to your inbox and not marked as spam.