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Reliable software, built for education at scale.

Hi, I'm Emanuel Aguirre — a senior PHP and Laravel engineer based in Valencia. 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
    engineers led across time zones
  • 3
    education platforms supported in production
01 — About

An engineer 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: Laravel backends, third-party integrations, database design, code review, release pipelines, and the occasional production incident. After a decade of this, what I do best is build software that disappears into the background and lets people learn.

I've also led small distributed teams through agile workflows, mentored junior engineers, and partnered across product, QA, DevOps, research, and marketing — translating fuzzy requirements into safe, observable releases.

02 — Experience

A decade of shipping.

Feb 2025 — Present
Remote · Valencia
  • PHP
  • Okta SSO
  • AWS SES
  • SonarQube
  • Pendo
  • Jenkins

Stride

Senior PHP Developer (Contract) · K12 Learning Coach Community

  • Maintain and extend a PHP-based community platform serving K12 learning coaches in the United States, focusing on permissions, user identity, deployment readiness, and platform stability.
  • Led multi-role single sign-on (Okta) integration spanning Learning Coach, Teacher, and School Admin access — including login-flow testing, role validation, edge-case coverage, and release-risk reduction.
  • Coordinated release readiness across multiple platform versions through branch preparation, pull-request review, code-quality validation, deployments to development and QA environments, and structured QA handoff.
  • Investigated production issues spanning analytics event loss, transactional email behavior (AWS SES), load-balancer redirect logic, CI/CD triggers, deep-link routing, and deployment rollback verification.
  • Integrated Pendo product analytics across the community platform and a related Stride education product, restoring production event reception and documenting a short, non-backfillable event-collection gap.
Jul 2018 — Jul 2024
Remote · LATAM / EU
  • Laravel
  • MySQL
  • Redis
  • Blackfire
  • Zoom OAuth
  • Docker

Open English

Technical Lead, PHP Web Developer

  • Led technical development of OpenEnglish Junior, an English-learning platform for Latin American students featuring live classes and asynchronous learning content.
  • Managed a team of five engineers across time zones using agile practices, daily coordination, and code-review-driven collaboration on GitHub.
  • Migrated an in-house PHP framework to Laravel, improving scalability, maintainability, and developer workflow as user demand grew.
  • Reduced page load time by 72% (900 ms → 250 ms) through Blackfire profiling, database query optimization, and caching improvements.
  • Delivered dynamic class registration, teacher-presence workflows, orientation class management, live-class routing, and Zoom OAuth integration.
  • Resolved routing, scheduling, and distributed-system issues through race-condition prevention, optimistic locking, queue reliability, high-traffic indexing, and improved monitoring and logging.
Sep 2014 — Jul 2018
Cordoba, Argentina
  • PHP
  • JavaScript
  • Stripe
  • Mandrill
  • Bootstrap
  • Zoom

StartSpanish

Full-Stack Web Developer

  • Owned the web technology stack for an online Spanish-language education company — maintaining production systems, shipping features, and informing product decisions.
  • Rebuilt the marketing site with a mobile-first approach, improving accessibility, presentation quality, and user engagement.
  • Refactored learning-application backend services using object-oriented design and DRY principles to improve maintainability and delivery speed.
  • Upgraded PayPal integration, added Stripe as the primary payment option, integrated Mandrill transactional email, and migrated live online classes from Adobe Connect to Zoom.
03 — Selected Highlights

A few wins worth telling.

01 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

02 Identity

Single sign-on across three roles.

1 login · 3 access models

Designed and shipped Okta SSO for the Learning Coach Community — supporting 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

03 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

04 — Toolbox

The stack I reach for.

A.

Backend

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

Frontend

  • JavaScript · TypeScript
  • React · Blade · JSX/TSX
  • 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
05 — Contact

Have a Laravel platform that needs a steady hand?

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

aguirre@emanuel.com.ar LinkedIn ↗ GitHub ↗
  • Based in Valencia, Spain
  • Hours EU & US East
  • Languages EN · ES (native)
  • Reply Within 24 hours