How to evaluate Laravel developers: Routing, ORM usage, security, and maintainable architecture

Evaluating Laravel talent requires more than reviewing a portfolio or checking basic MVC familiarity. Modern PHP development is increasingly architectural, security-focused, and performance-driven. Organizations that want to scale efficiently need engineers who can apply Laravel’s ecosystem to real-world business needs with precision. This guide outlines how to assess Laravel candidates across routing, ORM usage, application security, and maintainable architecture practices. It is particularly relevant for companies planning to hire Laravel developers for long-term projects.

Why Technical Evaluation Matters

Laravel is known for its elegant syntax and developer experience, but this makes it easy for underqualified candidates to hide behind framework magic. Effective evaluation prevents onboarding individuals who can build features quickly but struggle to maintain code quality, plan architecture, or enforce stability. A structured evaluation ensures the right engineering fit.

Core Areas to Assess

Routing and Request Handling

Senior developers should understand route organization, route caching, middleware usage, and versioned API routing. Strong performance indicators include:

 • Ability to design clean separation of web and API routes

 • Practical use of route model binding

 • Secure handling of request validation via Form Requests

 • Contextual middleware to avoid global clutter

 Weak candidates often overuse closures in routes, skip validation, or lack clarity on request lifecycles.

ORM and Database Mastery

The foundation of Laravel development is Eloquent. Effective evaluation examines whether the candidate can:

 • Model relationships efficiently (one-to-many, polymorphic, many-to-many)

 • Avoid N+1 query issues using eager loading

 • Write optimized queries using Query Builder when needed

 • Understand repository patterns for clean data abstraction

 Candidates who rely exclusively on Eloquent without understanding optimized SQL often create performance bottlenecks.

Security Standards in Laravel

Security is not a checklist. It is a mindset. When you hire Laravel developers, expect fluency in:

 • Input sanitization and validation patterns

 • CSRF protection and encryption configuration

 • Authentication and authorization flows, including Laravel Sanctum or Passport

 • Prevention of SQL injection, XSS, and mass assignment vulnerabilities

 Ideal candidates also understand rate limiting, secure session handling, and best practices with environment variables.

Maintainable and Scalable Architecture

Laravel projects live or die based on architecture choices. Evaluation should cover:

 • Understanding of service container and dependency injection

 • Practical use of service classes, events, and queues

 • Awareness of domain-driven design boundaries when appropriate

 • Modular thinking by splitting features into logical domains

 Ask candidates to walk through a project structure and justify their decisions. This reveals architectural maturity.

Testing Discipline

Testing elevates code reliability. Strong Laravel developers demonstrate:

 • Proficiency in Pest or PHPUnit

 • Confidence in feature and integration tests

 • Use of factories and seeders for clean test environments

 • Awareness of CI pipelines and automated testing fundamentals

 If a developer dismisses testing as unnecessary, it is a red flag for long-term reliability.

Familiarity with DevOps and Deployment

While not mandatory for all roles, senior Laravel developers should understand:

 • Dockerization and deployment pipelines

 • Caching strategies with Redis

 • Queue workers, Horizon monitoring, and scheduling

 • Version control best practices with disciplined branching

 This distinguishes production-ready engineers from feature-only coders.

Interview and Test Recommendations

• Portfolio walkthrough with code explanations

 • Realistic take-home test with time expectations clearly defined

 • Live refactor of a poorly written controller

 • Database schema review exercise

 • Scenario-based questions that test tradeoff decision-making

Indicators of a High-Value Laravel Developer

• They justify decisions with reasoning, not preference

 • They articulate tradeoffs rather than insist on best practices blindly

 • They protect future maintainability over cutting corners for delivery speed

 • They can collaborate with front-end, product, and QA teams confidently

Conclusion

Laravel development goes beyond syntax familiarity. It requires architectural judgment, disciplined security practices, and efficient ORM usage. Organizations that hire Laravel developers with these capabilities consistently reduce technical debt, improve release stability, and increase long-term development velocity. Evaluating candidates across routing, ORM patterns, security controls, and maintainable architecture provides a clear picture of who will support business growth rather than slow it down.