Role overview
Bookly brings service businesses and customers together through a multi-vendor booking platform. Businesses such as salons, spas, home-service providers and consultants use it to present their services, manage schedules and receive bookings. We are seeking a practical developer who can understand an existing codebase, maintain it reliably and make carefully tested improvements as priorities arise. The role combines troubleshooting, security awareness and useful product development.
Responsibilities
- Maintain the PHP and CodeIgniter application, investigate reported faults, reproduce problems and deliver focused fixes with clear explanations.
- Improve booking, scheduling, subscription, account and notification workflows while preserving existing customer records and business settings.
- Work with MySQL or MariaDB, including safe queries, useful indexes, migrations, transactions and checks for data consistency.
- Maintain responsive HTML, CSS and JavaScript interfaces, including the existing jQuery and Bootstrap components and light/dark themes.
- Handle integrations such as SMTP, scheduled jobs, Cloudflare verification and payment APIs with server-side validation and appropriate failure handling.
- Plan deployments with version control, reviewable changes, suitable backups, rollback steps and checks of the live result.
- Document important decisions, configuration requirements and maintenance procedures so another developer can continue the work.
- Communicate risks, dependencies, estimates and progress early, including when a change needs a larger redesign or external assistance.
Required experience and skills
- Demonstrable experience maintaining production PHP applications and reading an established codebase with care.
- Practical familiarity with CodeIgniter, preferably version 3, and PHP 8.2 compatibility and error diagnosis.
- Confidence with relational databases, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Git and debugging both browser and server behavior.
- Working knowledge of authentication, authorization, CSRF, SQL injection, XSS, session handling and safe file processing.
- Understanding that prices, permissions and payment confirmation must be verified on the server.
- Experience creating meaningful tests or reproducible checks that cover failures as well as successful requests.
- Clear written communication, discretion with access credentials and personal information, and dependable follow-through on agreed work.
Useful additional experience
- Experience with service marketplaces, booking systems, subscriptions or systems with several account roles.
- Familiarity with cPanel hosting, cron jobs, mail delivery, Cloudflare Turnstile and authenticator-based sign-in.
- Experience with verified webhooks, private payment evidence, accessibility, performance diagnosis or maintaining legacy applications.
What we expect
- Establish an agreed understanding of the codebase and a prioritized maintenance backlog before undertaking substantial changes.
- Leave each completed change reviewable, documented and checked against the relevant user journeys.
- Use least-privilege access and protect production data; obtain approval for spending, new paid services and significant scope changes.
- Help the team improve reliability through understandable logs, timely incident communication and practical prevention of repeated faults.
Working arrangements
- Work will be planned as periodic maintenance or agreed development assignments. Availability, turnaround expectations and urgent-incident arrangements will be discussed in advance.
- Responsibilities and decision-making boundaries will be agreed alongside the equity terms. Collaboration will require regular, proportionate progress updates.
How to apply
- Provide a concise summary of relevant PHP and CodeIgniter work and your contribution to those projects.
- Share suitable public code, a portfolio or a brief case study explaining a difficult production issue you resolved.
- Describe your availability and interest in an equity-based role. Share only material you have permission to disclose.
Compensation and important terms
- This is an equity-based opportunity with no starting salary. Compensation is intended to be an agreed share of the company. The share percentage, vesting, responsibilities, contribution expectations and other terms will be discussed and documented before engagement begins.
- Cash pay may be discussed as the business grows. Its timing and amount are not guaranteed. Applicants should consider whether an equity-based arrangement suits their circumstances and ask questions about the proposed terms before agreeing.
- There is no application fee, purchase or financial contribution required. Applications should contain professional information and work examples; do not include identity documents, bank details, passwords or confidential client material.