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Reliable software, built to stay calm in production.

Hi, I'm Emanuel Aguirre, a PHP and Laravel developer based in Spain. For over a decade I've helped education companies ship dependable platforms, scale them as user demand grows, and keep them calm through every release.

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  • 14+
    years building production software
  • 72%
    faster page loads at Open English
  • 5
    developers led across time zones
  • 3
    education platforms supported in production

A developer who treats production like the most important feature.

Most of my career has lived inside education platforms: places where uptime is non-negotiable, students rely on a working live class, and a slow page is a missed lesson.

I work end-to-end on the platforms I join: Laravel backends, third-party integrations, database design, code review, release pipelines, and the occasional production incident. I'm usually the technical voice in the room when business is weighing a new effort, translating intent into concrete solution paths and naming the trade-offs before scope locks in.

I've led small distributed teams through agile workflows, mentored juniors, and walked teammates through the blockers and ambiguous calls that always live around the edges of a feature, partnering across product, QA, DevOps, research, and marketing to turn fuzzy requirements into safe, observable releases.

A decade of shipping.

Feb 2025 – Present
Remote · Spain
  • PHP
  • Okta SSO
  • AWS SES
  • SonarQube
  • Pendo
  • Jenkins

Stride

PHP Developer (Contract) · K12 Learning Coach Community

  • Own a PHP-based community platform for parents supporting K12 students at Stride: permissions, identity, deployment readiness, and stability.
  • Led multi-role Okta single sign-on across parent, teacher, and school-admin access: login flows, role validation, and edge-case coverage in place before any user saw it.
  • Investigated cross-stack production issues: analytics gaps, AWS SES email, load-balancer redirects, CI/CD triggers, deep-link routing, and rollback verification.
Jul 2018 – Jul 2024
Remote · LATAM
  • Laravel
  • MySQL
  • Redis
  • Blackfire
  • Zoom OAuth
  • Docker

Open English

Technical Lead, PHP Web Developer

  • Led OpenEnglish Junior, an English-learning platform for Latin American students with live classes and async content, and migrated it from an in-house PHP framework to Laravel without disrupting live classes.
  • Managed a distributed team of five developers across time zones: daily coordination, code-review on GitHub, and growth check-ins with each one.
  • Cut home-dashboard page load by 72% (900 ms → 250 ms) through Blackfire profiling, query optimization, and strategic caching during the migration.
Sep 2014 – Jul 2018
Cordoba, Argentina
  • PHP
  • JavaScript
  • Stripe
  • Mandrill
  • Bootstrap
  • Zoom

StartSpanish

Full-Stack Web Developer

  • Owned the full web stack at an online Spanish-language education company: production systems, feature delivery, and product decisions.
  • Rebuilt the marketing site mobile-first and refactored backend services for maintainability and delivery speed.
  • Added Stripe as the primary payment option alongside PayPal, integrated Mandrill transactional email, and migrated live classes from Adobe Connect to Zoom.

A few wins worth telling.

Performance

72% faster, end to end.

900 ms → 250 ms

Profiled production hot paths with Blackfire, optimized the slowest queries, and added strategic caching during the Laravel migration, bringing the home dashboard from 900 ms down to 250 ms without changing the UX.

Open English · 2018–2024

Identity

Single sign-on across three roles.

1 login · 3 access models

Designed and shipped Okta SSO for the Learning Coach Community: Learning Coach, Teacher, and School Admin access from a single authentication flow, with edge-case coverage in place before any user saw it.

Stride · 2025

Migration

Off legacy. Onto Laravel.

In-house framework → Laravel

Led the migration of OpenEnglish Junior off a hand-rolled PHP framework onto Laravel without disrupting live classes, using the move to rebuild scalability, maintainability, and developer velocity.

Open English · 2018–2024

The stack I reach for.

A.

Backend

  • PHP / Laravel
  • MySQL · MariaDB · Redis
  • REST APIs · queues · Horizon
  • Database & query optimization
  • Caching strategies
B.

Frontend

  • JavaScript
  • Blade · HTML
  • CSS · SASS/SCSS
  • Bootstrap
  • Mobile-first implementation
C.

Integrations

  • Zoom API & OAuth
  • Salesforce API · Okta SSO
  • Pendo product analytics
  • Stripe · PayPal · Mandrill
  • AWS S3 · AWS SES · Google Calendar
D.

DevOps & Quality

  • Docker · Docker Compose
  • Git · GitHub · Bitbucket
  • Jenkins · CI/CD · SonarQube
  • Blackfire · New Relic · Apache
  • PHPUnit · feature tests
E.

Leadership

  • Technical leadership
  • Code review · mentoring
  • Release planning · QA handoff
  • Production support
  • Cross-functional delivery
F.

Working Style

  • Production-first thinking
  • Clear written communication
  • Async-friendly collaboration
  • Calm releases & safe rollbacks
  • Documentation as a feature

Have a Laravel platform that needs a steady hand?

Open to contract and full-time backend roles, especially around education, performance, and platform reliability. Best reached by email.

aguirre@emanuel.com.ar LinkedIn ↗ GitHub ↗
  • Based in Spain
  • Hours EU & US East
  • Languages EN · ES (native)