PHP Developer Hiring Checklist: Skills, Salaries & Interview Questions

Hiring the right PHP developer is a critical pick that can make or break your development pipeline. As a tech company that is in the race to develop scalable web apps, eCommerce platforms, or custom CRMs, PHP stands as a powerful and widely used backend technology. Choosing the wrong fit can have negative consequences such as messy codebases, costly rewrites, and long development delays. 

If you want to make your mark and sustain in the competitiveness of the hiring landscape you need to go a step further than just finding someone who knows PHP. You need to identify a developer who exhibits strong technical fundamentals, updated framework knowledge, and solid soft skills. PHP has remained the powerhouse of web development for quite some time now and the trend is expected to continue. 

Hiring PHP developers comes with its unique setbacks such as outdated resumes, inconsistent portfolio quality, or limited exposure of developers to modern tools such as Docker, Composer, and CI/CD. Additionally, the growing complexity of picking amongst the emerging hiring approaches and the need for a structured and scalable process becomes a pressing priority. 

This is where this blog aims to serve the purpose by offering a walkthrough of the must-have skills, salary insights, interview questions, and a hiring checklist. Consider this as your PHP developer hiring guide to help you make informed hiring decisions confidently. Once you give it a read, there’s no more room for guesswork or trial-and-error approach.

Must-Have Skills for a PHP Developer

There are several skills that matter and make up the comprehensive PHP developer skills checklist. It’s not just the technical side of it that matters, but soft skills account for an equal weight in the skills checklist.

The following table will offer you a better clarity regarding the skills you must assess when hiring a PHP developer:

What’s the PHP Developer Salary in 2025? (US Benchmarks)

After evaluating the PHP developer skill set it’s time to conduct a thorough research of the salary benchmarks in the industry and formulate a competitive compensation. When your offering is a step ahead of your rivals only then can you have a first-mover advantage in attracting and retaining top PHP talent. 

Depending on experience, location, skill set, economic conditions, market demand, and several such hiring factors, PHP developer salaries can greatly vary. For instance, if you choose to hire PHP developers from the USA, the PHP developer salary US estimates based on experience will be something as under:

• Junior- level developer : $64,000 to $74,000
• Mid-level developer : $83,000 to $115,000
• Senior-level developer: $124,000 to $163,000

Let’s say if you opt to hire PHP developers remotely from India, the average salary estimates based on experienced will be:

• Junior- level developer : starting from $26,000
• Mid-level developer : starting from $27,000
• Senior-level developer: starting from $33,000

While remote roles tend to offer flexibility and slightly lower salaries, in-house developers can offer immediate availability and quick response times. If you are still debating your pick between these 2 approaches, this blog can serve as a quick fix: In-House vs. Remote PHP Developers: Which is Best for Your Business?

Besides these 2 hiring routes, the Gig economy has also gained a widespread prominence and freelancers have begun to have a considerable domination in the marketplace. If you are looking for short-term or project-specific assistance while keeping a hold on your budget, freelancers could be an ideal pick. Depending on project complexity, experience, and skill level the rate of PHP freelancers can typically vary. Let’s see the bifurcation based on experience level:

• Entry-level freelancers with 0-2 years of experience command anywhere between $20-$40 per hour.
• Freelancers with a mid-level expertise of 2-5 years can charge in the range of $40-$80 hourly.
• Senior freelancers that have 5+ years of experience in PHP can charge $80 or more per hour, going as high as $150 hourly.

Important Notice: If you are considering hiring PHP developers from high demand states like California, New York, and Texas, know that they expect their salary to be 10-20% above the national average. This is mainly because of the discrepancy in the living cost, demand, and economic conditions of these states. 

Interview Questions to Assess PHP Developers

Hiring right starts with having the right PHP developer skills checklist, formulating the right salary, and asking the right questions. These PHP developer interview questions are designed for assessing technical proficiency, framework-specific knowledge, and behavioral capabilities of the developers. 

Let’s categorize these smart interview questions to vet PHP talent:

Technical screening questions

Ques. Explain PHP’s type juggling and strict types.

This helps assess their understanding of loose vs. strict typing and potential runtime errors. 

Ques. How do you optimize a slow MySQL query in PHP?

Evaluates their familiarity with indexing, EXPLAIN queries, and caching mechanisms. 

Framework-specific questions

Ques. What is Laravel’s service container?

Examine their understanding of dependency injection and IoC principles.

Ques. How does Symfony’s dependency injection work?

Tests the developer’s knowledge of service configuration and container behavior.

Behavioral & Problem-Solving Questions

Ques. Describe a time when you debugged a complex PHP issue

Reveals their problem-solving mindset and debugging toolkit.

Ques. How do you handle legacy PHP code refactoring?

Analyzes whether they follow a cautious, test-driven approach or prefer aggressive rewrites. 

Advice: For a hands-on evaluation, combine these questions with a live coding test or GitHub review session.

PHP Developer Hiring Checklist

A succinct and smart hiring process isn’t just about interviews. Turn your PHP developer skills checklist into an actionable roadmap with the following tips:

• Define project requirements clearly

Determine whether you need full-time, part-time, or contract-based developers by defining your tech stack and deliverables. 

• Source candidates from the right places

Look for top talent on Stack Overflow Jobs, We Work Remotely, GitHub, PHP dev communities, or hiring platforms like Uplers. Partner with Uplers and eliminate the candidate sourcing, shortlisting, vetting, and onboarding hassle with top AI-vetted talent from India. 

• Structure the interview properly

This should be a combination of the questions based on resume review, assigning a coding challenge, and a live problem-solving session. All these are ways to verify the truthfulness of the resume claims in the real-world. 

• Watch out for red flags

Avoid common hiring mistakes and look for candidates who are unfamiliar with PHP 8, are using outdated frameworks, or are giving vague answers to scenario-based questions. 

Why Uplers Is Your Edge in PHP Hiring

At Uplers we believe in going a step further to resume matching and connect your tech company with AI-vetted PHP developers. Whether you want to incorporate AI in your hiring funnel or are looking to reduce the cost of hiring PHP developers with uncompromised quality, we have your back.

Uplers is an end-to-end AI hiring platform that streamlines hiring of top talent from India. With a 3M+ talent network we use an AI algorithm and human intelligence to vet the top 3.5% profiles and send them in your inbox within 48 hours. Our AI-powered algorithm gives an AI score after matching the requisites on your JD to the resume of the PHP developers from our talent network. As compared to other IT staffing agencies, we share AI-vetted and AI-interviewed profiles for faster, efficient, reliable, and cost-effective hiring. Wondering how?

• Fast and efficient: Our 4-step vetting process eliminates the majority of the hiring gruntwork.
• Reliable: Candidates are screened using AI as well as human evaluation.
• Cost-effective: Up to 40% savings on hiring costs. 

We are the top preference for 7,000+ global brands for over a decade because we work with you. We not only offer AI-vetted profiles but also help you with onboarding and a lifetime free talent replacement policy. Connect with us and simplify your search for top PHP developers today. 

Bonus Tips for Hiring Success

Hiring isn’t just a transaction but a long-term investment which is why you must set it up for success. Here are a few bonus tips to help you expedite hiring:

• Use smart tools

Leverage AI in recruitment with tools like ChatGPT for screening follow-ups, or platforms like HackerRank for coding evaluations. 

• Offer more than money

Seal the deal with other perks that go above and beyond the monetary gains. This could include remote flexibility, a tech learning budget for their professional growth, dedicated mentorship, etc. 

• Look beyond today

Developers with exposure to PHP + cloud (Azure, AWS) or AI/ML frameworks will make your team future-ready. 

Final Take: Download Your PHP Hiring Checklist Now

Hiring the right PHP developer serves as a mix of art, science, and timing. With the right PHP developer skills checklist, interview strategy, and salary benchmarking, you can step ahead of the other hiring managers. Whether you are a lean startup or a scaling tech company, a structured approach will pay off. Take a faster path to success with Uplers and make AI-vetted hires that matter.