Job Descriptions: FML
Every now and then I read a tech job description that makes me wonder if the person writing it has ever actually met a software engineer.
Recently I stumbled across a job description (well, someone emailed me it) for a Principal Engineer – PHP Developer. Let’s walk through it, shall we?
Hello! Thanks for checking out our job posting for the role of Principal Engineer - PHP Developer at [Redacted]. You’ve already taken a tiny step towards being a part of our team – huzzah! 🦜
A cheerful greeting. Fine. A good sign I guess but is it? Like really? Nothing says serious principal engineering role quite like sounding like the opening line of a children’s TV show.
“I’m your host, Captain Recruitment, and today we’re going on a magical journey to discover whether YOU have what it takes to become a PRINCIPAL ENGINEER!”
Righto, next.
About The Role
We are looking for a Principal Engineer with deep expertise in Laravel. You won’t just be shipping code - you’ll be defining the technical strategy that scales our app api.
In this role you will own the quality, scalability, and security of app api, remove technical bottlenecks and solve “hard” engineering problems, elevate the team’s output, improve PR standards, and draw the right balance between tech-debt and speed of delivery (optimising for business requirements). Ideally, you are a backend authority who also has the pragmatic full-stack skills (especially ReactJS) to unblock features and drive delivery end-to-end.
The old “you won’t just be writing code” line. You’ll be defining technical strategy.
Which usually means:
attending meetings.
explaining why things take longer than two days.
But don’t worry. You’ll still be writing the code as well.
So far we have established that you would be responsible for:
the quality
the scalability
and the security
So if anything breaks, it’s your fault. I mean, I guess it’s fine, as long as the salary matches, right? We’re talking loadsa loadsa £££.
Ok next bit…
Responsibilities
Whilst every role in a startup has a degree of flexibility over time, here is what we see as the role’s main responsibilities:
Architect high-performance, scalable APIs that serve as the backbone of our platform.
Making high-stakes decisions on scalability, maintainability, data modeling, and performance.
Elevate the entire engineering team by setting high standards, conducting rigorous PR reviews.
Make smart trade-offs between “perfect code” and speed to market, understanding that engineering is a lever for business growth.
Champion reliability and observability. You build it, you run it! Ensure our systems are debuggable, resilient, and performant in production.
Ship complex, high-value features end-to-end. You are hands-on and lead from the front, unblocking the team on the hardest technical challenges.
Basically, again, telling you how many responsibilities you’ll have.
“High-stakes decisions.”
It makes it sound like you’re sitting in a war room deciding whether to launch a satellite. In reality, this will often look like:
“Should we add another index to this table or will it upset the migration pipeline?”
But sure. Yeah. High stakes. Your responsibilities will actually include:
asking people to rename variables.
suggesting better abstractions.
and gently explaining for the fifth time why a 700-line controller might not be ideal.
Next.
About You
The type of person we think will be awesome in this role will likely have a track record of the below skills and experience:
Extensive commercial experience (sweet spot is 8-12 years) designing and building mission-critical SaaS platforms using Modern PHP & Laravel. You understand the framework’s internals.
Practical experience implementing Domain-Driven Design
Sufficient experience with ReactJS and TypeScript to comfortably handle full-stack features and unblock frontend challenges when necessary.
Deep experience with modern testing frameworks, CI/CD pipelines (we use GitHub Actions), and maintaining “production-ready” code standards.
Demonstrated ability to prioritise business value and “move rapidly” over perfection.
Ability to explain complex technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders in simple terms.
The years-of-experience requirement. Oh my god. This horseshit again. Possibly the most meaningless metric in the entire tech industry.
Years of experience doesn’t actually tell you much.
You can spend seven years working at a company where:
the codebase never changes.
no one reviews pull requests.
architecture means “copy the last file and rename it”.
and deployments involve FTP.
everyone is shipping absolutely horrendous code.
At that point, you don’t have seven years of experience.
You have about six months of experience… repeated fourteen times.
The industry moves fast.
If you’re not learning, experimenting, breaking things, fixing things, and improving your thinking — time alone doesn’t magically turn into expertise.
Also, why is the sweet spot 8-12 years? As soon as you hit 12 years and 1 day you’re out of this sweet spot? Someone, help me understand.
Next!!!
Pay & Benefits
Total compensation packages are based on a wide array of factors unique to each candidate, including but not limited to demonstrated skill set, years and depth of relevant experience, location and some role-dependent factors. We’ll be happy to discuss this during the interview process.
Work from Anywhere – [Redacted] is a fully distributed & remote company that supports employees working wherever they’d like to be (within the parameters of your role’s requirements). We offer an allowance to ensure your working environment suits you.
Flexible Holiday and Leave – you’ll receive all statutory holiday plus wellbeing leave and flexible annual leave for you to rest, relax, or recharge as you see fit.
Company share options – be a business owner and have your very own little piece of [Redacted].
Learning & Development Budget – so you can be proactive about learning something fun outside of your core role.
Annual Onsite – we all take flight once a year and gather the flock together somewhere cracking to spark new ideas, connections and memories! In the past we’ve traveled to Tenerife, Barcelona, and Marrakech.
The paragraph that explains the salary without actually mentioning the salary. After all the detail they’ve given so far about the role and how many different hats and responsibilities you’ll have, you don’t even have a salary range!!!
Instead we get the usual vague language about:
demonstrated skill sets
years of experience
location
role-dependent factors
Followed by the reassuring line:
“We’ll be happy to discuss this during the interview process.”
Which is recruitment speak for:
“We’d prefer to find out how little you’re willing to accept first.”
All the rest of it isn’t too bad, but this line…
“learn something fun outside of your core role”
Imagine explaining to your manager that your learning budget went toward studying medieval sword making.
Next up…
Firstly, no need for a cover letter (phew!). Please just share your resume and responses to the application questions.
Our Interview Stages Are
HR Screen (25-30 minutes): A brief chat with [Redacted] (Head of People) to discuss your background, what you’re looking for next, and answer any initial questions about the company or team.
Technical Challenge (Take-home): A practical coding exercise designed to let you showcase your engineering standards - focusing on clean architecture, and modern Laravel practices. We respect your time and keep this concise.
Collaborative Technical Workshop (90 mins): A “real-world” working session with our engineers. We will use your code submission as a base to solve 2-3 additional problems together. We also provide detailed feedback on your submission during this call.
Engineering Excellence Interview (45 mins): A deep-dive technical interview with technical co-founder, Ace. We will discuss system design, architectural trade-offs, and how you approach building scalable, mission-critical software.
Culture & Alignment Interview (45 mins: A final conversation with [Redacted] (CEO) and [Redacted] (COO) to ensure our values align and that we can offer the environment you need to thrive.
Wow. Amazing. No cover letter needed. Fanks. Phew! Just a five-stage interview gauntlet.
HR screen
Take-home coding challenge
90-minute collaborative workshop
Deep technical interview with the co-founder
Culture & alignment interview with the CEO and COO
All of which is perfectly reasonable (well, actually probably not, could probably do this in 2 stages)… except for one small detail: at no point will you actually know how much money they plan to pay you.
You’ll spend hours proving your worth, writing real code, solving architecture puzzles, and explaining technical trade-offs — all while flying completely blind on compensation.
And most likely they’re going to choose the cheapest viable option anyway.
And to round it off.
We hope you’re as excited to apply as we are to hear from you - Good luck!
Hard pass. I won’t be applying thank you very much! Go eat a bag of dicks.
