Simatechsimatech

Hire a nearshore PHP development team

Hire a nearshore PHP development team that ships Laravel and Symfony in production

Simatech gives product owners in the UK, Netherlands, Belgium and DACH a full nearshore PHP team from Bulgaria — senior Laravel and Symfony engineers, a Product Owner and a Scrum Master — in your timezone, on your standards, for roughly a third of the cost of an in-house London or Amsterdam team.

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EU-based · GDPR-native · Overlapping hours with London, Amsterdam, Berlin & Zurich

Why hire your PHP team nearshore with Simatech

Senior PHP only

Every engineer has shipped and maintained PHP 8.x in production. No junior pool, no rotating bench, no learning on your budget.

Legacy is not a dirty word

We take over PHP 5/7 monoliths, add tests, upgrade to PHP 8.3, and strangle modules out to Laravel or Symfony services without a big-bang rewrite.

EU contracts, EU data

Bulgarian OOD, EU VAT, invoiced in EUR or GBP. Data stays in EU regions under your DPA — no offshore data risk.

AI-native delivery

Spec-to-PR tooling, review copilots and test generation mean a small senior PHP squad out-delivers a much larger classic team.

The PHP stack we work in

You can hire a single PHP engineer into your existing team, or a full squad that owns a service end to end.

Frameworks

  • Laravel
  • Symfony
  • Slim
  • API Platform
  • Livewire
  • Filament

Data & persistence

  • MySQL / MariaDB
  • PostgreSQL
  • Redis
  • Elasticsearch
  • Doctrine
  • Eloquent

Quality & tooling

  • PHPUnit / Pest
  • PHPStan (level 8)
  • Rector
  • PHP-CS-Fixer
  • Xdebug
  • Blackfire

Platform & CI/CD

  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • GitHub Actions
  • GitLab CI
  • AWS / Azure
  • Terraform

Front end

  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Vue
  • Inertia.js
  • Tailwind CSS
  • Vite

AI features in PHP

  • OpenAI / Anthropic SDKs
  • RAG on pgvector
  • MCP servers
  • Queue-based inference
  • Evals
  • Observability

How the engagement works

  1. 01

    Week 1 — Scoping sprint

    Fixed-fee discovery: codebase audit, outcomes, backlog, architecture and a delivery plan. You keep every artefact, even if we stop there.

  2. 02

    Week 2 onwards — Two-week sprints

    Sprint goal, planning, daily, refinement, review, retro — all in your timezone, all in your tools (Jira / Linear / GitHub).

  3. 03

    Every sprint — Working increment

    Reviewed, tested, deployable PHP every two weeks. Static analysis and test coverage reported alongside the demo.

  4. 04

    Any time — Scale up or down

    Add or release engineers on 30 days' notice. No lock-in, no minimum term after the first two sprints.

What you get

PHP 8.3
Modern runtime, typed code, PHPStan level 8 as the default bar
2 wks
From kickoff to the first deployable increment
≈1/3
Of the cost of an equivalent London or Amsterdam team
100%
EU-based, GDPR-native, English as the working language

Frequently asked questions

Can you work on our existing Laravel or Symfony codebase?
Yes — that is the majority of our PHP work. We start with a codebase audit, add characterisation tests around the risky parts, then ship changes inside your existing release process.
Do you upgrade legacy PHP versions?
Yes. We run incremental upgrades (5.6 → 7.4 → 8.3) using Rector and PHPStan, with tests added before each step so the upgrade is verifiable rather than hopeful.
Can we hire a single PHP developer instead of a team?
Yes. Staff augmentation starts at one senior PHP engineer embedded in your team, with the same contract, notice period and code standards as a full squad.
Which other technologies come with the PHP team?
TypeScript and React or Vue on the front end, Postgres or MySQL, Redis, Elasticsearch, Docker and Kubernetes, plus AI features (RAG, MCP tooling) built directly into your PHP application.
Do the code and IP belong to us?
Yes. All work-for-hire IP transfers to you on payment. No shared components, no vendor lock-in.
How fast can we start?
A scoping sprint can start within 10 working days of signature. A full squad is typically at full speed after two sprints.

Ready to put senior PHP engineers on your roadmap?

Book a 30-minute intro call. If it fits, we can start a fixed-fee scoping sprint within two weeks.

Book an intro call