? Help Support the World's Biggest Social Justice Movements
Chuffed.org is a global crowdfunding platform powering the world's biggest social justice movements. We've helped raise over $250M across 50,000 campaigns in 23 countries and we're just getting started.
In the last year we've grown 3x and become the go-to platform for activists and organisations in two of the biggest social justice movements of our times: Palestine and climate justice.
We're now hiring a Mid-Senior Software Engineer to expand our team and help us build and scale a platform that powers thousands of purpose-driven campaigns, while shaping the technical foundations that will support our next phase of growth.
What You'll Do
We are a small, high-trust engineering team. This role is backend-leaning and central to the stability, scalability, and long-term health of our platform. You'll take responsibility for improving and maintaining our Laravel/MySQL backend systems, with particular focus on hardening and optimising what already exists while delivering new backend functionality.
Here's what that looks like day-to-day:
Deliver backend support for product features
, working pragmatically across the stack when needed
Design and build scalable APIs
and backend features within our existing architectural direction, with strong emphasis on performance, reliability, and maintainability
Drive initiatives focused on
security improvements, stability, and database/query optimisation
Identify bottlenecks, technical debt, and production risks
and execute pragmatic fixes
Optimise MySQL databases
to ensure high performance and reliability, including , indexing strategies, migrations,



and complex queries
Write documentation of features and concepts
, and ensure existing documentation is kept up-to-date
Use monitoring and logging tools to troubleshoot
and resolve software issues, to ensure reliable application performance
Collaborate with the customer support team
to ensure common bugs or feature requests are prioritised or fixed
What We're Looking For
4+ years experience as a Software Engineer
, with strong knowledge of:
PHP8 and Laravel 11+
, including an understanding of modern PHP best practices
Solid experience
designing and working with relational databases
(MySQL), including schema design and query optimisation
Proven experience
improving application security, reliability, and performance
in production systems
Experience
writing automated tests
(e.g. PHPUnit, Jest), and contributing to regression suites such as Cypress
Good understanding of software design principles
(SOLID, OOP, design patterns) and pragmatic tradeoffs in a fast-moving product team
Comfortable with
communicating technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
A strong growth mindset
- you're not afraid to take risks, fail, and learn
A passion for social justice




and a robust desire to help Chuffed campaigners succeed
Able to iterate quickly on product features
, making pragmatic UX and UI decisions when design patterns aren't fully defined
Comfortable
operating independently
within defined technical boundaries
Pragmatic decision-maker
who understands when to escalate larger architectural concerns
Strong executor who can
take backend problems from identification through implementation
without heavy oversight
Bonus points if you have:
Experience working on systems handling financial transactions or sensitive user data
Demonstrated experience managing
AWS
services
Proven experience working with
GraphQL
, in a backend and/or frontend environment
Strong working knowledge of React and/or NextJS, and confidence building production-ready UI
Experience working with
IaC
principles and tools, particularly
Terraform
$140,000 salary + super
We value work-life balance. We work autonomously from home and meet up with the team intermittently to collaborate in-person. We're based in Sydney and Melbourne but open to remote employees within Australia
Work alongside industry leading marketers and digital engineers in a small and agile team with deep industry connections
Spend your days amplifying the work of campaigners pushing for progressive social change around the world
We're building a diverse and inclusive workplace. We encourage people from all backgrounds, ages and abilities to apply. We value all kinds of experiences, so even if you don't meet all of the requirements outlined above, we encourage you to apply.

📌 Mid-Senior Software Engineer (Php/Laravel) (Sydney)
🏢 Chuffed.org
📍 Sydney