Legacy PHP rescue, Laravel upgrades & AI features — fixed price, shipped weekly
Senior PHP backend engineer, working remotely from UTC+8. I take over legacy systems nobody wants to touch, build the internal tools that replace the work your team is still doing by hand, and wire LLMs into the workflows where they actually pay off. Price fixed before we start, a running version every week, and the full source code and documentation are yours.
Focused on three industries: cross-border e-commerce · export manufacturing · law, accounting and tax firms
The first conversation is free. You get a workable plan and a quote, whether or not you hire me.
RichardWay — independent senior PHP engineer, 12 years of backend and architecture experience, working remotely in UTC+8. Taking projects from Europe, North America, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China, in English or Chinese. Contact: richardway2020@gmail.com
HOW I WORK
Code your next engineer can read
Clean layering, tests on the critical paths, handover docs included. No black box that only I can maintain.
A running version every week
A staging URL you can open at any time, so progress is a fact rather than a status report. If I slip, the contract says what I owe you.
Six months of warranty
Free bug fixes for 6 months within the delivered scope after sign-off, and a 2-hour response time for production incidents.
Three industries I focus on
Plenty of developers can write code. Fewer already know how your orders, stock and approvals actually flow. In the first two industries I have delivered related systems, listed in the cases below. For law and accounting firms I have no same-industry case yet, but the knowledge-base and audit-trail pieces are built and reusable. I would rather say that here than have you find out later.
Amazon, Temu and TikTok Shop orders and stock in one back office
Marketplace rules change every month and your ERP does not keep up. Each marketplace has its own back office, so stock does not match, payouts do not reconcile and nobody can say what a SKU really earns. I build the layer your ERP does not cover and the marketplaces will not. One past project: orders pulled automatically from three marketplaces, stock synced both ways every few minutes, exceptions queued for a human without blocking normal fulfilment.
- Order and stock sync across Amazon / Temu / TikTok Shop / Shopify
- Overseas warehouse, 3PL and WMS links, stock synced within minutes
- Payout reconciliation and SKU-level profit, pushed into your accounting system (QuickBooks, Xero or NetSuite via their APIs)
- Keep the ERP or multichannel tool you already run; I fill its gaps through its own API
- Shopee and Lazada (Southeast Asia) can be integrated the same way via their Open APIs — no delivered case on those two yet
- AI drafts multilingual support replies and checks listing fields; payout gaps are sorted by rule and flagged for a human
See every order’s status from your phone
Orders, scheduling and shipping still run on spreadsheets and group chats; the ERP was bought but the shop floor never adopted it. For one manufacturer I moved that flow into an order and production system with mobile approvals: manual data entry fell to under a third of the hours, and it launched in 5 weeks. If you source from Chinese factories, I sit on their side of the timezone and speak their language: I can connect your system to your suppliers’ order and shipping data, and sort out the integration directly with their team in Chinese.
- Enquiries, quotes and orders in one system; a changed delivery date reaches the floor at once
- Scheduling, production progress, shipment tracking, mobile approvals
- Barcode warehousing: receiving, put-away, picking and stocktaking
- Reads and writes your existing ERP, so nobody keys an order twice
- AI drafts enquiry replies for sales to approve; quotes, proforma invoices and packing lists generated from order data by template
A knowledge base hosted at your firm, with answers you can trace to the source
Legislation, contract templates and years of working papers fill the drives. Juniors cannot find anything and seniors have no time to teach. You would like to use AI, but not at the risk of client data leaking or answers nobody can trace. I build a knowledge base on your own servers: each answer quotes the passages it relied on, and says so when it finds nothing. Ask “what liquidated damages did last year’s share buyback agreement set?” and you get that clause and the file it came from. I don’t need to see your client files to build it: we test on a sample set you choose, and the production index is built on your servers by your IT.
- Documents and index on your servers; the model runs locally (nothing leaves, needs hardware) or via a cloud API (cheaper, redaction scope in the contract)
- Search your own legislation files, case notes, contracts and working papers; answers quote the passages
- Visibility by partner, team and matter; queries and downloads traceable by person and date
- Contract review prompts and first drafts for your lawyers or accountants to review; I do not give legal or tax advice
- Ask from Microsoft Teams or Slack; confidential matters can be limited to a page on your intranet
Not in one of these three industries? That is fine: the six general services below still apply. For e-commerce sellers and export factories, you do not have to explain orders, stock or scheduling from scratch. For law and accounting firms, I will spend the first call learning your workflow before proposing anything.
What I take on
No “I can build anything” pitch. These six areas are where I have the most reps, the most certainty, and the best chance of saving you money.
Legacy PHP rescue & Laravel upgrades
Original developer gone, nobody can read the code, everything breaks when you touch it? This is the work I am best at. Make it reliable first, optimise second.
- Taking over and mapping old codebases: older Laravel, CodeIgniter, ThinkPHP, plain PHP 5/7
- Production incident triage, data repair, stopping the bleeding
- PHP 7 → 8.x and Laravel version upgrades, with tests backfilled first; incremental, zero-downtime migration
- Writing the docs that were never written
Custom internal software
End-to-end delivery from requirements to launch. For SME internal systems and business platforms I own the whole pipeline — you do not coordinate a team.
- Admin panels / ERP / CRM / workflow tools
- Mobile and messaging-app backends
- API development and third-party integrations
- Payments, orders, permissions and other core modules
Putting AI to actual work
Want to use AI but not sure where to start? I pick one workflow that shows a measurable result in 2–3 weeks and ship it, instead of selling you a three-year roadmap.
- Internal knowledge base / document Q&A
- Support replies, drafting and content generation
- LLM APIs wired into the systems you already run
- Rolling out AI coding tools and training the team
Data pipelines & process automation
Turn repetitive manual work into scripts, and scattered exports into one number your team trusts. Low investment, fast payback.
- Compliant data collection and cleaning
- Spreadsheet, reporting and reconciliation automation
- Cross-system sync and scheduled jobs
- Monitoring, alerting and dashboards
Performance & security hardening
System slowing down, database struggling, site compromised or under attack? You get a written diagnosis with numbers, not a list of generic recommendations.
- Slow query analysis, SQL and index optimisation
- Caching architecture, concurrency and high-load handling
- Code security audit and vulnerability fixes
- Server and deployment hardening
Technical advisory / architecture review
You do not have to hire me to write code. Team stuck, unsure about a technology choice, need a vendor quote sanity-checked — book me by the hour.
- Technology selection and architecture review
- Vetting outsourcing quotes and delivery quality
- Dev process and AI productivity recommendations
- Monthly retainer available (fixed hours per month)
Starting points in USD, benchmarked for clients in Europe and North America; quotes can be issued in EUR or GBP. After scoping you get one fixed total price in writing — no increases along the way.
In Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines)? Projects there are quoted individually for your market and can be invoiced in SGD.
Why hire me instead of an agency
Agencies are not the problem. The problem is that on a small or mid-sized project, every layer between you and the person writing the code adds lost context and margin.
| Comparison | Working with me | Development agency |
|---|---|---|
| Who writes the code | Me, start to finish — 12 years of experience | Sales scopes it, engineers build it — but staff are replaceable, so no single point of failure |
| Communication path | Direct. Scope changes confirmed in the same conversation | You → sales → PM → developer. More layers, but someone is paid to chase it |
| Pricing | Fixed total price, scope written into the contract | Usually per person-day — more flexible when scope is genuinely unknown |
| Lead time | A running version every week; the delivery date is in the contract | Queued behind other accounts, but can add people to compress a deadline |
| Code quality | Clean layering, docs, tests where they matter | Process and code review set a floor an individual cannot guarantee |
| After launch | 6 months of free fixes, 2-hour incident response | 1–3 months through a ticket queue — but staffed in shifts, so no single point of failure |
| Source code & IP | All yours, stated in the contract | Depends on the contract; often withheld |
| Contract, NDA, invoice | All available | Yes, plus the certifications a public tender needs |
If your project looks like any of these, hire an agency instead of me
- It needs five or more people working in parallel, or a fixed launch date that can only be met by adding headcount
- It needs 24/7 on-call coverage with someone awake in every timezone
- It needs tender eligibility, ISO or security certifications, or a formal public procurement process
I cannot do those, and I will not take the deposit and figure it out later. Being clear about what I don’t do is how you can trust what I say I do.
Business first, technology second
Most failed software projects fail because nobody agreed on the problem, not because of the code. I start by asking whose problem a feature solves, and when the answer is thin I will tell you to cut it. That is your budget, not mine.
No lock-in, by design
Every project ships with deployment notes, database design, API docs and comments on the parts that are not obvious. The test is simple: could another engineer take this over without calling me? If not, it is not finished.
Built for remote work
I am in UTC+8: a full working-day overlap with Southeast Asia, and your morning if you are in Europe. Written updates and a staging URL you can open at any time are the default, with calls scheduled when a decision needs one — in English or Chinese, whichever is easier for your team.
Direct about what is not possible
No jargon smokescreen. You get progress, risks and constraints in plain language. If something is a bad idea or outside what I can do well, I say so instead of taking the deposit and stalling.
How we work: five steps, nothing hidden
Every step has a concrete output, so you always know where the money went and where the project actually stands.
Free conversation
30 minutes to understand the business context and the goal. This step is free, and you do not need a technical plan to start it.
Proposal & quote
Within 1–3 business days: a scope list, a timeline and a fixed total price. Explicit boundaries, so there is nothing to argue about later.
Contract & kick-off
Contract signed, 30% to start. We agree on the communication channel and I set up the staging environment.
Weekly delivery
A running version every week. You give feedback while it is still cheap to change, instead of reviewing a finished product you cannot afford to reject.
Sign-off & warranty
We check the scope list item by item, I hand over source code and documentation, you settle the balance. The 6-month warranty starts.
💰 Payment schedule
30% up front · 40% midway · 30% after sign-off. No full prepayment — neither of us carries all the risk.
📋 Scope changes
Small adjustments absorbed at no cost. Larger changes quoted separately before any work starts — no silent add-ons.
⏱ If it runs late
If the delay is mine, the contract states the compensation or the reduction on the final invoice. You do not have to chase it.
🔐 Confidentiality
NDA and a GDPR Data Processing Agreement (with EU Standard Contractual Clauses) available. By default, personal data never leaves your infrastructure: I work through your VPN or bastion host in your own cloud account, use anonymised or synthetic data locally, and keep no copies after delivery.
Tech stack
Built around the PHP ecosystem, with frontend and operations covered too, so you do not need a second contractor. Everything ships through Git with CI, a staging environment, and tests on the paths that would hurt if they broke.
Selected cases (anonymised)
Client details are anonymised. Before/after figures come from the same monitoring or report on both sides, and I give orders of magnitude rather than precise percentages you couldn’t verify. On a call I’ll walk you through the data behind any of them.
Amazon / Temu / TikTok Shop order and inventory sync
- PROBLEM
- One dashboard per marketplace. Orders were exported and re-keyed by hand and stock was reconciled manually, so overselling and missed shipments kept happening.
- WHAT I DID
- Integrated each marketplace API: orders pulled automatically, stock synced both ways, fulfilment and tracking pushed back. Exceptions go to a separate queue for a human instead of blocking the normal flow.
Order and production coordination for a manufacturer
- PROBLEM
- Orders, scheduling and shipping ran on spreadsheets and group chats. Information lagged by a day and the wrong goods went out regularly.
- WHAT I DID
- Built an end-to-end order management system, connected inventory and logistics lookups, added mobile approvals.
Warehouse management system (WMS) with barcode operations
- PROBLEM
- Bin locations lived in one veteran employee’s head, stocktaking meant closing for a day, and the book inventory had not matched the shelves in years.
- WHAT I DID
- Built the location and batch model, then added handheld barcode scanning for receiving, put-away, picking and checking, with mobile stocktaking and a full movement history.
Multi-platform data consolidation and reconciliation
- PROBLEM
- The ops team exported data from several dashboards by hand and merged it every morning — three hours of work, with mistakes that reached management.
- WHAT I DID
- Scheduled collection and cleaning jobs that build the daily report automatically and push it to the team channel.
Internal knowledge base with AI Q&A
- PROBLEM
- Policies and product material were spread across hundreds of documents. New hires and support staff kept asking the same questions.
- WHAT I DID
- Built a RAG knowledge base into their existing chat tool, with source citations and permission isolation.
Group-wide OA / office management system
- PROBLEM
- Approvals ran on paper forms and group chats, so nobody knew whose desk a request was sitting on. Attendance, official documents and assets each lived in its own spreadsheet.
- WHAT I DID
- One system covering approvals, attendance, documents and asset management. Workflow steps are configurable, approvals work on mobile, and every action leaves an audit trail.
Taking over and stabilising an 8-year-old PHP e-commerce platform
- PROBLEM
- The original team was gone. Frequent 500s, downtime during sales peaks, nobody willing to touch the code, and no documentation of any kind.
- WHAT I DID
- Three weeks: mapped the core flows, added monitoring and logging, fixed the critical concurrency bugs, and wrote the handover documentation.
Fixing a database bottleneck under load
- PROBLEM
- As traffic grew, APIs timed out across the board. Adding servers did not help. The database was suspected, but nobody could pinpoint the cause.
- WHAT I DID
- Slow query analysis, index rebuilds, hot-data caching, splitting long transactions — delivered with a before/after report.
English-learning app for young children
- PROBLEM
- What parents want is a child who keeps going. The existing web course was awkward on phones, unusable without a connection, and gave parents no view of progress.
- WHAT I DID
- Native iOS and Android apps with downloadable offline lesson packs, level-based practice with pronunciation scoring, and a parent view showing progress.
Business English app for working professionals
- PROBLEM
- Adult learners have fragmented time and a concrete goal: English that works in a meeting, an email or a negotiation, not grammar from the beginning.
- WHAT I DID
- Content organised by workplace scenario (meetings, email, interviews, negotiation), an AI speaking partner giving live pronunciation correction and feedback, and resume-where-you-left-off for short sessions.
Direct-to-consumer commerce app for a brand
- PROBLEM
- The brand sold only through third-party marketplaces: no retained customers, repeat business dependent on the platform’s recommendations, and no access to its own customer data.
- WHAT I DID
- Own-brand shopping app covering catalogue, cart, orders, payment, shipment tracking and after-sales, connected to their own membership and marketing systems.
Your project could be next
Start with a conversation — there may be a cheaper way to get there.
Free consult →Frequently asked questions
How do you quote? Can the price change mid-project?
What stops you from disappearing halfway through?
① Staged payments — 30% to start, 40% midway, 30% on sign-off. No full prepayment, so at any moment your exposure is one stage, not the project.
② Code is pushed daily to your repository, not mine. You always hold a complete, running copy of the latest work.
③ Deployment docs are delivered in week one, not at handover — another engineer can pick it up without needing me on a call.
④ A formal development contract states the liability for breach, the termination terms and how work to date is settled.
Put plainly: if I vanished, you would lose a week of progress, not the project.
You use AI tools. Am I getting AI-generated code nobody can maintain?
What does the warranty actually cover, and for how long?
To be explicit: new features, changed requirements, and rework caused by third-party platform changes are new work and are quoted separately — at better rates for existing clients.
Do I own the code? Can someone else maintain it later?
Can you sign a contract and issue an invoice?
What if I am unhappy halfway through?
You are one person. What happens if you get ill?
My scope is small. Is it worth your time?
How do payments, invoicing and contracts work across borders?
You’re in China. Is our customer data safe, and is that GDPR-compliant?
You are in UTC+8. How does that work with a team in Europe or the US?
You’re based in China. Why $150 an hour?
Is this your full-time job? How many projects do you run at once?
Tell me the problem first
Describe what is going wrong — you do not need a technical plan. The first conversation is free, by email or on a call in English, and you get a straight answer on whether it is doable, roughly what it costs, and how long it takes.
Prefer WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack or Teams? Email me and I will join whatever your team already uses.
Usually replies within 2 hours · Weekdays 9:00–22:00 UTC+8 — covering the whole Southeast Asian working day and European mornings