A freelance senior software engineer for Manchester teams, on UK hours
Laravel and PHP modernisation, Next.js builds and performance work for Manchester agencies and product teams, with your morning in my afternoon.
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Why Manchester teams bring me this work
If your Manchester agency or product team runs on PHP, this is the page for you: Laravel apps that need upgrading, older CodeIgniter or bespoke PHP that needs replacing, and sites that have to get faster without a rebuild. Laravel is my main stack, and the TopGear India migration is the kind of job I mean: CodeIgniter rebuilt in Laravel while the newsroom kept publishing every day, with every URL kept as it was. The UK's data-protection regulator now has its head office in your city, too.
What teams across the United Kingdom bring me
- Your platform has grown faster than its architecture, and every release now carries risk.
- Slow pages and poor Core Web Vitals are costing you search traffic and conversions.
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The hours we share with Manchester
Manchester keeps UK time: your 09:00 is 14:30 in Mumbai in winter and 13:30 in summer, so your morning is my afternoon. For agency work that means feedback from your morning lands while I'm at my desk, and fixes reach staging the same day, with a note on what changed.
Each city's 09:00–18:00 working day on the clock in Mumbai (UTC+5:30), in January and in July, so daylight saving is accounted for.
| City | In January | In July |
|---|---|---|
| ManchesterUTC+0 / UTC+1 | 14:30–23:30 | 13:30–22:30 |
Clocks British Summer Time (UTC+1): the clocks go forward one hour at 1am on the last Sunday in March and back one hour at 2am on the last Sunday in October; GMT (UTC+0) the rest of the year. GOV.UK: When do the clocks change?
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Rules a Manchester team's software meets
The regulator's new head office
The Information Commissioner's Office moved its head office from Wilmslow to the Circle Square development in Manchester city centre on Monday 28 September 2026. The new address is 4th Floor, No.3 Circle Square, 5 Hawkshaw Street, Manchester M1 7BL.
Source: ICO: Head office address change
Why Manchester
The ICO announced the move on 2 June 2025, saying Manchester puts it close to universities and other organisations working in data and digital. Its head office had been in Wilmslow for forty years.
Source: ICO: Head office to move to Manchester (2 June 2025)
Legal system
Manchester is in the jurisdiction of England and Wales, which has a legal system separate from Scotland's.
Source: GOV.UK: 'Two jurisdictions, a shared inheritance' (Attorney General's speech)
Across the United Kingdom: UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 · Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 · Off-payroll working rules (IR35)
This is engineering guidance, not legal advice: confirm what applies to your business with your counsel.
Further reading
- Article: CodeIgniter to Laravel: a staged migration playbook · 10 October 2026
How to move a live CodeIgniter or plain-PHP application to Laravel in reversible stages, keeping every URL and the business running.
- Article: Laravel performance in 2026: a production playbook · 10 October 2026
What actually makes Laravel applications fast in production, from queries and caching to queues and Octane.
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Contracts and invoicing
Invoices in pounds sterling, monthly or per milestone, paid through Wise or Payoneer. I can work under your services agreement, plus a data processing agreement wherever I handle personal data.
More on working with teams in the United Kingdom is on the United Kingdom page.
Tax and legal treatment depends on your company and country: confirm it with your accountant or counsel.
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Where Manchester teams usually start
Laravel development and upgrades
Laravel applications and APIs built, upgraded and kept current by an engineer whose main stack is Laravel.
- Price
- Fixed quote per stage after reading the code
- Timeline
- Scoped on a first call; upgrades are planned one major version at a time
Legacy modernization
Move an aging system to a modern stack without stopping the business.
- Price
- Fixed-price assessment, then a fixed quote per stage
- Timeline
- An assessment first, then migration in stages on a schedule agreed with you
Next.js development and migration
Fast, indexable front ends: new Next.js builds, and migrations from single-page React or PHP templates without losing search traffic.
- Price
- Fixed quote after the inventory
- Timeline
- Planned after an inventory of routes and templates
Performance and Core Web Vitals audit
Find out in five working days exactly why your application is slow, and what to fix first.
- Price
- Fixed price
- Timeline
- Agreed per project
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Case studies
- Case study: TopGear India CMS · CMS migration and modernization
- page load time, before → after
- 1–3 min → 3 s
- Case study: Vayudoot Aviations · Education platform
- Case study: Exhibit Social · B2B SaaS platform
- influencers indexed
- 10,000+
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Questions from Manchester teams
What hours do we share with Manchester?
The same as London: your 09:00 is 14:30 in Mumbai in winter and 13:30 during British Summer Time. Feedback from your morning reaches me in my afternoon, which keeps an agency's review loop to a day.
Can you modernise an old PHP app without a rewrite?
Usually, yes. A Laravel app is upgraded in steps, with tests added as it goes; older CodeIgniter or bespoke PHP moves in stages, with the old and new systems side by side until the switch is boring. A short, fixed-price assessment tells you which path fits before you commit to either.
Where is the UK's data-protection regulator now?
In Manchester. Since 28 September 2026 the Information Commissioner's Office, which regulates UK GDPR, has had its head office at No.3 Circle Square, 5 Hawkshaw Street, Manchester M1 7BL, after forty years in Wilmslow.
Do you have an office in Manchester?
No. I work remotely from Mumbai, with no office or address in Manchester, and I don't offer in-person meetings there. Your agency's reviews happen on video and in pull requests.
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