Senior I - Software Engineer (PHP)

A Little About Us

UniCourt is a leader in making court data more accessible and useful with our Legal Data as a Service (LDaaS). We provide real-time access to court data through our APIs and online app for business development and intelligence, litigation analytics, litigation tracking, case research, investigations, background checks, due diligence, compliance, underwriting, machine learning models, and process automation.

We provide access to court data from state and federal courts to a diverse list of clients, including Fortune 500 companies and AmLaw firms and industries such as legal, insurance, finance, investigations, government, education, nonprofits, and consumers.

UniCourt is a legal technology company focused on using technology to unlock the potential of legal data. We are based in both California and Mangalore, India and our team includes legal professionals, data scientists, physicists, computer engineers, and sales and marketing, professionals.

About the Job

We are seeking a highly skilled Senior I - Software Engineer (PHP) to join our engineering team. The ideal candidate will be responsible for developing scalable web applications using modern PHP frameworks, driving architectural decisions, maintaining high code quality, and mentoring junior developers. You will play a key role in system design, deployment strategy, and ensuring efficient CI/CD workflows.

Our company creates some of the world’s most cutting-edge software solutions in the legal industry. We solve difficult problems, work on innovative technology, and build world-class platforms for people and enterprises to interact with court records and other public data sets. With some of the best minds in the industry, we’re one of the most sought-after learning and career destinations in the world of legal tech. If you’re looking to work at a company with opportunities to forge your career path in technology, UniCourt is the right place for you. Our customers range from individuals who interact with court records a few hours in a month to enterprise clients who spend several hours every day on our SaaS platform.

Duties & Responsibilities

• Lead the development of feature-rich web applications using PHP (Laravel) and JavaScript.
• Create technical specifications (FDDs/IDDs) with structured design and pseudocode.
• Estimate efforts accurately for development, testing, and deployment tasks.
• Design, implement, and optimize PostgreSQL and MySQL database schemas.
• Build responsive and modern UIs using HTML, CSS, and Tailwind CSS.
• Contribute to system architecture with a focus on microservices and Dockerized deployments.
• Write clean, efficient, and well-documented code with clear logic justifications.
• Adhere to consistent naming conventions and apply optimal data structures and patterns.
• Perform thorough developer testing to minimize QA feedback loops.
• Conduct peer code reviews and uphold coding best practices.
• Ensure successful and timely releases with minimal production downtime.
• Plan and execute database migrations, system upgrades, and infrastructure improvements.
• Integrate DevSecOps best practices across the development lifecycle.
• Monitor live deployments, analyze metrics, and quickly resolve production issues.
• Mentor junior developers and assist in reviewing their code and test cases.
• Collaborate cross-functionally in design discussions and solution architecture reviews.
• Evaluate and adopt relevant new frameworks and libraries into the CI/CD pipeline.
• Assess and integrate open-source tools with a focus on compliance, performance, and security.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.

Required Skills

• 4+ years of experience in full-stack web development.
• Expertise in PHP (Laravel) and JavaScript (ES6+).
• Strong command of PostgreSQL and MySQL, including large dataset performance tuning.
• Solid experience in Docker and container-based development environments.
• Proficiency in HTML, CSS, and Tailwind CSS for responsive UI development.
• Experience designing and developing RESTful APIs.
• Strong understanding of system performance, code profiling, and debugging tools.
• Exposure to CI/CD pipelines and modern deployment strategies.
• Willingness to adopt AI-assisted development tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or Windsurf for prototyping, documentation, and debugging.
• Demonstrated ability to integrate AI tools to improve development efficiency and code quality.

Nice to Have Skills & Experience

• Experience with Figma for UI/UX prototyping and collaboration with design teams.
• Exposure to AI/ML, Big Data, or high-volume data processing systems.
• Contributions to open-source projects on GitHub or similar platforms.