Head of PHP
Hybrid
Lancashire, United Kingdom
Full Time
12-04-2025
Job Specifications
Location: UK (Hybrid)
Salary Range
GBP £60k – £70k (subject to experience)
About Us
Reading Room is a user-led, data-centric consultancy. Fundamentally understanding users’ needs, motivation and behaviours in relation to our clients’ products and services is the key to success.
We help all kinds of passionate brands and organisations to realise their digital ambitions. And, as a 60-strong team of digital specialists across the UK, Europe & Asia, we work with clients from the deep dive and digital strategy, through to design, technology and communications that define how customers feel and interact.
We are not afraid to challenge conventional thinking and we’re well known for our candid, jargon-free approach to delivery.
Our work adheres closely to the principles of user-centric design and delivers client work using agile processes, and in-depth discovery.
Our impressive client portfolio spans Buckingham Palace and the Royal Household, Public sector brands such as NHS, Health Education England and MHRA, to Membership organisations like British Safety Council, Unite the Union, UK Coaching and The British Society of Haematology to Charities such as Cystic Fybrosis Trust, Mates in Mind and ambitious commercial enterprises, including Royal Mail MarketReach, and Riviera Travel … to name just a few.
We’re proud to be part of the independently owned Rippleffect Group, alongside our sister company: RONIN International, a research consultancy which is providing an even bigger toolbox for clients to collect data, understand their customer and scale up in other countries.
Job Purpose
Lead and guide our Drupal / PHP development team to deliver commercially pragmatic, high quality solutions for our clients.
Champion best practice and foster a dynamic positive culture; contributing to the wider Drupal community and supporting our stance as a great agency choice for prospects, clients and teams.
Deliver high quality code and solutions to our long-standing clients. Act as a trusted technical expertise in partnership with our clients. Drupal development, PHP coding - architecting solutions, leading projects, working with our Technical Solutions Team, contributing to our proposals, and helping to win new clients with problem-solving and ideas; break down technical ideas into layman's terms.
Role Responsibilities
As our senior-most leader of the PHP backend development team:
Provide team direction and timely delivery of stated objectives.
Identify training opportunities and skills gaps within the team and make recommendations to the Group Technical Director.
Review team processes and ways of working, making & implementing recommendations in collaboration with wider agency leadership and delivery colleagues across PM, Front-end, and QA as appropriate
Act as an escalation point for the rest of the team on technical issues.
Train junior members of the team.
Design and architect hosting platforms.
Troubleshoot and fix issues with Apache and PHP configurations.
Provide technical input to company tools and processes
Supporting planning of and delivery to the Drupal community, maintaining and increasing ‘credit’ thresholds so that we can continue to climb
Development Of Web, Digital And Products In Drupal, Including
Architecting and building complex enterprise-scale Drupal websites
Configuration Management
Object Oriented Programming
A good understanding of Drupal’s API, Custom module and theme development
API Integrations (REST/SOAP)
A keen eye for security and performance
Working with Git + follow a branching methodology
Designing and architecting hosting platforms.
Configuring hosting platforms using cloud platforms such as AWS or Azure
Understand the hosting environment and troubleshoot configuration issues
Troubleshoot, configure and own CI tools
Understand the tooling used across the business
Using And Developing Skills In
Apache / Nginx configuration
Knowledge of Cloudflare or other CDN providers
Knowledge of and application to Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Javascript / jQuery
Continuous Integration (Bitbucket Pipelines, Github Actions)
Automated Testing (Unit testing, Behat, Cypress)
Docker
Exposure to SEO best practices
Ultimately, You Own The Team Direction And Provide Support To The Rest Of The Team To Improve The Company's Technical Landscape
Understand each team members strengths and weaknesses
Identify opportunities to upskill other members of the team
Understand the deadlines of the team and support the timely delivery
Provide technical input to company tools and processes.
Be a technical point of contact for the management team
Be an escalation point for the company and clients on technical issues
Being Part Of The Reading Room Means
Actively participating in learning, development and feedback opportunities and cycles as required by our policies and procedures.
Acting in accordance with relevant legislative and regulatory requirements as may apply from time to time.
Promoting Equal Opportunities and avoiding any behaviour that either directly or indirectly discriminates against others on the grounds of any protected characteristic.
Taking Health and Safety duties seriously to ensure your safety and that of your colleagues and clients.
Being an active team player and attending team meetings and briefings to which you are invited.
Being an ambassador of our values in the approach to your role, your colleagues and our clients.
Other Duties
You are expected to perform various tasks as necessitated by your evolving role within Reading Room and its overall business objectives, as reasonably requested by your designated manager or the CEO.
You must read and ensure you understand the current versions of our policies and procedures and undertake to act in accordance with them at all times.
You may be required to work at other locations in accordance with the responsibilities and duties of your role.
The above is not an exhaustive list of duties and may be subject to change.
About You
Qualifications & Training:
Official qualifications not necessary – experience working proficiently across Drupal and its versions is vital.
Experience
Multiple years working with Drupal professionally
Essential
Knowledge and Skills:
Proven leadership skills that result in creating a productive team, with efficient and effective processes
Approachable, being able to coach and develop team members
Knowledge of cloud platforms such as AWS.
Proven use and configuration of CDN tools such as Cloudflare.
Experience of configuring CI tools such as bitbucket pipelines.
Architecting and building complex enterprise-scale Drupal websites
Configuration Management
Object Oriented Programming
A good understanding of Drupal’s API, Custom module and theme development
API Integrations (REST/SOAP)
A keen eye for security and performance
Working with Git + follow a branching methodology
Nice to have
Apache / Nginx configuration
Knowledge of Cloudflare or other CDN providers
Knowledge of and ap...
About the Company
Reading Room is a full-service digital transformation agency with offices across the UK. As an ever-curious, 100-strong team of digital specialists, we cover the whole caboodle – from user research and digital strategy, through to design, technology and digital marketing. Know more
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