Senior PHP & Symfony developer for custom business software, integrations, legacy modernization and company websites.
PHP Freelancer
Custom software with PHP and Symfony – integrations, microservices, inventory and shipping logic, legacy modernization and company websites. E-commerce focus, straight from the developer.
Custom software with PHP & Symfony
Tailor-made business software with PHP and Symfony – integrations, inventory, shipping, CRM/ERP and microservices around your store.
View detailsIntegrations & APIs
Connect store, ERP, inventory, wholesalers, logistics and marketplaces properly – integrations that run day to day and tell you when something fails.
View detailsModernize legacy PHP
Analyze, secure and upgrade grown PHP applications to current PHP and Symfony, then keep developing them – AI-assisted, secured with tests.
View detailsSymfony Freelancer
New Symfony applications, upgrades to current versions, API Platform and Messenger, continued development and maintenance of existing Symfony projects.
View detailsPHP Maintenance & Support
Your custom PHP software runs – and should keep running. Updates, security, monitoring, bug fixing and small changes with a fixed point of contact.
View detailsPerformance PHP & MySQL
Slow pages, a sluggish database, imports that take hours – I measure, find the bottlenecks and fix the ones with the biggest effect first.
View detailsBack-Office Tools & Automation
Replace Excel lists, copy-paste between portals and manual routines with lean internal tools – for order processing, returns, stock, pricing and reporting.
View detailsCode Review & Second Opinion
An independent technical assessment before you decide – code review, evaluation of quotes and architecture proposals, technical due diligence.
View detailsCompany website & relaunch
The company or brand website next to your store – rework, maintain or relaunch, from a single source together with store, integrations and software.
View detailsFor agencies
Senior developer capacity for agencies – Symfony, Shopware, code reviews, emergencies and white-label implementation, remote and at short notice.
View detailsNot every requirement fits into a store plugin. When the processes around orders, inventory, shipping, customers or suppliers need software of their own, I build it with PHP and Symfony – as a senior developer who understands the requirement, decides on the architecture and implements it himself.
My focus stays on e-commerce: companies that run a Shopware store and need the systems around it to work together – integrations with wholesalers and logistics providers, custom inventory and shipping logic, CRM or ERP connections, microservices for prices, stock levels or order processing.
Typical situations
- A store is running, but the processes behind it are held together with spreadsheets, e-mails and manual work.
- Wholesalers, suppliers or logistics partners deliver data in formats that no standard plugin handles cleanly.
- A grown PHP application still runs, but nobody dares to touch the code anymore – updates, security and new features are stuck.
- The company website is technically outdated, slow or no longer maintainable and needs a fresh start.
- An agency needs a senior developer for Symfony work that is not covered in-house.
Why work with me?
I come from e-commerce and know the reality of stores, inventory systems and integrations from many years of practice. For store operators that means: store, integrations, custom software and company website from a single source – one contact instead of five freelancers passing responsibility back and forth. That means I do not build abstract "software" but systems that fit into a running business – with an eye on data quality, error cases and the daily routine of the people who use them.
For existing code I use AI-assisted tools for analysis, test coverage and migration. That makes modernization much faster than it used to be – but the decisions about architecture, security and risk are mine, not the tool's.
How I work
First a short technical assessment: what is the actual problem, which systems are involved, where is the biggest lever? Then a clear process of analysis, prioritization, implementation in traceable steps and a clean handover – with documentation, tests and no dependency on me as the only person who understands the system.
If you want to check directly whether I fit your topic, use the project request. For Shopware-specific topics see my services under Shopware Freelancer.
How I work
Three principles that apply in every project
Understand before building
First the short technical assessment: what is the actual problem, where is the lever, what makes economic sense? Then the implementation.
Build instead of forwarding
You talk to the developer who does the work – no handover chain, no black box, clear status updates and early warning about risks.
Hand over instead of holding on
Code in your repository, tests, documentation and a deployment process your team understands. No vendor lock-in – your system does not depend on me afterwards.
Background
Experience at a glance
- Today
- Senior freelancer in ongoing Shopware projects of several agencies and merchants – at home in foreign repos, processes and deadlines.
- Since 2021
- Self-employed as Stefan Pilz Ltd. – remote for merchants and agencies: Shopware 5 and 6, Symfony, migrations, maintenance.
- 2015 – 2020
- E-commerce backends: inventory, PIM and Amazon/eBay integrations for around 3.5 million products, then the Drillisch mobile-carrier web stores.
- Since 2012
- Full-time web developer – first at an agency: websites and stores with Joomla, xt-Commerce and Shopware.
- 2002
- Completed vocational training as a software developer (C/C++). First own PHP websites from 2004.
See current and completed projects Career and stack in the CV