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Laravel Devs: Meet Top 20 Experts

laravel experts - Laravel Devs: Meet Top 20 Experts

Laravel has grown into one of the most beloved PHP frameworks in the world, driven by a passionate global community of builders, teachers, and innovators.

From open-source contributors and core team members to content creators, startup founders, and ecosystem toolmakers, these individuals shape how Laravel is used and understood today. Whether they’re writing code for millions of developers, maintaining essential packages, or educating the next generation through blogs and screencasts, each one has made a lasting impact. Below is a curated and updated list of the most influential Laravel developers active today.

  1. Jeffrey Way
  2. Dan Harrin
  3. Freek Van der Herten
  4. Eric L. Barnes
  5. Matt Stauffer
  6. Nuno Maduro
  7. James Brooks
  8. Tim MacDonald
  9. Mohamed Said
  10. Barry van den Heuvel
  11. Dries Vints
  12. Caleb Porzio
  13. Graham Campbell
  14. Jason McCreary
  15. Adam Wathan
  16. Joe Dixon
  17. Mior Muhammad Zaki
  18. Marcel Pociot
  19. Povilas Korop
  20. Jess Archer

Now, let’s delve deeper into their qualifications and achievements:

Jeffrey Way

YouTube Video

Nationality: American

Jeffrey is the founder of Laracasts, the premier learning platform for Laravel and modern PHP.

A veteran web developer and educator, he’s often credited as “one of the significant popularizers of Laravel”, since countless developers learned the framework through his screencasts. Laracasts (launched in 2013) offers thousands of lessons that cover not only Laravel itself but the full stack around it (from PHP to JavaScript, testing, and tooling). With his clear teaching style and deep expertise, Way has massively improved Laravel’s adoption and continues to release new training content weekly, solidifying his influence in the community.

Dan Harrin

Nationality: British

Dan is the co-creator and lead maintainer of Filament, a rapidly rising open-source Laravel toolkit for building admin panels and form interfaces.

At just 19 years old, Dan launched Filament from the UK, and it quickly gained adoption for its elegant, TailwindCSS-powered UI components that “accelerate the development of Laravel apps”. Filament has since grown into an ecosystem of plugins and has become a top choice for developers needing admin dashboards, all under Dan’s guidance. Harrin also works as a full-stack engineer (CTO of a startup) but dedicates enormous effort to Filament’s community – reviewing contributions, writing documentation, and engaging with users.

He exemplifies the new generation of Laravel talent: self-taught, collaborative, and impact-focused.

Freek Van der Herten

Freek Van der Herten - Laravel Devs: Meet Top 20 Experts

Nationality: Belgian

Freek is a prolific Laravel package developer and open-source advocate, best known as a partner at Spatie in Belgium.

As co-owner of Spatie, he has co-created a “big portfolio of open-source packages” that the Laravel community relies on – so much so that Laravel developers joke Spatie has a package for everything. Under Freek’s stewardship, Spatie’s Laravel tools have been downloaded over 500 million times, addressing needs from security to media processing.

Freek also shares his knowledge through his blog and conference talks, and is regarded as a go-to expert for elegant Laravel solutions in both code and architecture.

Eric L. Barnes

Nationality: American

Eric is the founder of Laravel News, the official news site of the Laravel community. Since 2012, Laravel News has been the go-to source for framework announcements, tutorials, package releases, and community happenings – all curated or written by Eric.

This platform has significantly unified the community by disseminating knowledge and spotlighting contributors. Barnes himself is a seasoned developer and writer; he has authored countless articles and even a book on Laravel, always aiming to help developers stay up-to-date. In addition to running Laravel News, Eric co-hosts the Laravel News Podcast and is involved in organizing Laravel events. His work as a content curator and community connector makes him an indispensable figure in keeping the Laravel ecosystem vibrant and informed.

Matt Stauffer

If you care about your craft, clarity and simplicity should be your default.

Nationality: American

Matt is a prominent Laravel developer, educator, and co-founder of Tighten, a respected Laravel-focused consultancy. He authored Laravel: Up & Running, widely considered the definitive book for learning Laravel, now in its third edition.

Matt has contributed to Laravel open source projects and is known for hosting The Laravel Podcast for several years, where he’s interviewed Laravel’s makers and shared framework insights. At Tighten, he has led the development of many Laravel applications and fostered best practices that he often shares through blog posts and talks. “Matt plays a huge part in the Laravel ecosystem,” noted one profile, highlighting his roles as a technical director at Tighten and community mentor. His efforts have helped countless developers and driven Laravel’s growth in enterprise teams.

Nuno Maduro

Nuno Maduro - Laravel Devs: Meet Top 20 Experts

Nationality: Portuguese

Nuno is a Laravel core team member and one of the most inventive package authors in the PHP ecosystem.

He crafts developer tools that make coding easier, having created multiple industry-standard projects – including the Pest PHP testing framework, Laravel Zero micro-framework, Larastan static analyzer, Laravel Pint code formatter, and more. His open-source projects have collectively been downloaded over 500 million times, reflecting their huge popularity among PHP and Laravel developers. As part of Laravel’s core team, Maduro contributes directly to the framework that powers sites for companies like Apple and OpenAI.

He is also an educator through conference talks, YouTube streams, and community events, continually sharing his passion for clean, joyful developer experience.

James Brooks

Nationality: British

James is an engineering team lead at Laravel, working on Laravel Forge and other first-party services. A Laravel core contributor, James is widely known for creating CachetHQ, an open-source status page system he founded before joining the Laravel team.

Cachet gained significant popularity as a Laravel application, showcasing James’s ability to build robust products. At Laravel, he focuses on “creating epic developer tools” – for example, he develops features that make server management with Forge simpler for thousands of users. Brooks also maintains Laravel Envoyer (deployment tool) and shares knowledge through his personal blog and talks about DevOps in the Laravel context. His blend of product-building and open-source experience makes him a key player in Laravel’s continued success.

Tim MacDonald

Nationality: Australian

Tim is a Laravel core team member recognized for his thoughtful blog posts and contributions to the framework’s testing and collections APIs.

Hailing from Australia, Tim has authored numerous Laravel packages and tutorials, often focusing on advanced patterns like caching strategies, custom Eloquent casts, and test conveniences. He is an active blogger at timacdonald.me and a frequent open-source creator, sharing tools that he originally crafted for his own projects (such as better conditional queries or debugging helpers). Now part of the official Laravel team, Tim contributes code to the core and helps review community contributions, acting as a bridge between Laravel and its developer base.

His clear writing and practical examples have helped many intermediate developers grasp complex Laravel concepts more easily.

Mohamed Said

Mohamed Said - Laravel Devs: Meet Top 20 Experts

Nationality: Egyptian

Mohamed rose to prominence through his contributions to Laravel’s core and was the first full-time developer hired by Taylor Otwell to work on the framework.

An expert in Laravel’s internals, Said has been instrumental in building and maintaining features such as real-time broadcasting, queues, and notifications. He authored Laravel Horizon (for queue monitoring) and co-authored Laravel Telescope (debug assistant) among other tools, and literally “open-sourced his way” into his dream job on the Laravel team. Mohamed remains an active Laravel ambassador – creating educational content (e.g. Laracasts lessons, a queues ebook) and helping developers via talks and blogs – all while crafting new features that keep Laravel at the cutting edge.

Barry van den Heuvel

Nationality: Dutch

Barry is an open-source contributor best known for creating essential development packages for Laravel. He is the author of Laravel Debugbar, a tool that adds a debugging toolbar to Laravel apps, and Laravel IDE Helper, which aids IDEs in providing auto-completion for Laravel code.

Both of these packages became almost standard for Laravel developers, significantly improving developer experience during coding and debugging. Beyond these, Barry has contributed to many other Laravel community projects and was an early adopter of Laravel (active since the framework’s initial versions). His work exemplifies how community contributions can become indispensable to everyday Laravel workflow.

Dries Vints

Nationality: Belgian

Dries is a Laravel core team alum and community leader known for improving the Laravel developer experience.

During his tenure on the core team, Vints managed the official Laravel.io forum and authored open-source tools like Laravel.io (the community Q&A site) and Eventy, while also contributing to the framework itself. He co-organized the Full Stack Europe conference and local Laravel meetups, reflecting his passion for community building. Dries is also recognized for his developer utilities (like a popular dotfiles setup and tooling packages) that help streamline Laravel project setup.

Even after moving on from day-to-day core work, he remains a respected voice in the Laravel world through his writing and mentorship of new contributors.

Caleb Porzio

Caleb Porzio - Laravel Devs: Meet Top 20 Experts

Nationality: American

Caleb is the creator of Laravel Livewire, a revolutionary framework for building dynamic interfaces in Laravel using server-side rendering, and Alpine.js, a lightweight JavaScript library.

These two projects form the core of the popular “TALL stack” (Tailwind, Alpine, Laravel, Livewire) used by many Laravel developers to create reactive applications without heavy JavaScript frameworks. Formerly a developer at Tighten, Porzio took the bold step of going full-time open-source, funding his work via sponsorships. His innovations have made modern interactivity accessible to PHP developers and inspired a wave of Laravel ecosystem tools. Caleb also shares his journey and knowledge through conference talks, streams, and blog posts, encouraging others to build and monetize open-source projects.

Graham Campbell

Nationality: British

Graham is a open-source developer in the Laravel sphere and was one of the framework’s early core team members. He gained fame for maintaining over a dozen Laravel-related packages, covering utilities from security to GitHub integrations, and for his role in the wider PHP community’s coding standards.

Graham also founded StyleCI, an automated code style fixing service, widely used by Laravel projects to enforce clean code style. As a frequent contributor to Laravel’s codebase, he helped improve the framework’s functionality in its formative years. Although he has since moved on to other ventures, Campbell’s packages and influence (especially around code quality tools) remain part of the Laravel ecosystem’s backbone.

Jason McCreary

Nationality: American

Jason is the creator of Laravel Shift, an innovative automated service that upgrades Laravel applications to newer versions, saving developers countless hours of work. He’s also known for his book and course “Confident Laravel”, which teaches developers to write reliable Laravel applications.

As a long-time Laravel developer, Jason (often known as “JMac”) has contributed to the community with various tools and open-source packages, but Shift is his flagship accomplishment – it has processed thousands of Laravel apps, reflecting his deep understanding of the framework’s evolution. McCreary actively shares tips on testing, refactoring, and Laravel internals via his blog and talks, empowering developers to level up their craft and confidently maintain their projects.

Adam Wathan

Adam Wathan - Laravel Devs: Meet Top 20 Experts

Nationality: Canadian

Adam is an influential developer-entrepreneur who first made his mark in the Laravel community and later co-created Tailwind CSS, the utility-first CSS framework now ubiquitous in web development.

Early on, Adam authored many Laravel tutorials, packages, and courses – including the popular book Refactoring to Collections, which taught developers to write more expressive Laravel code. He also contributed to Laravel’s ecosystem (for example, helping create Laravel Valet for local development). In recent years, Wathan’s focus on Tailwind CSS (originally extracted from his Laravel projects) has transformed frontend design for Laravel developers and beyond.

He remains a frequent speaker on podcasts and at conferences, bridging the Laravel and broader web dev worlds, and exemplifying how specialization can lead to wider innovation.

Joe Dixon

Nationality: British

Joe is a member of the Laravel core team who has been instrumental in Laravel’s push into serverless and cloud services. He played a key role in developing Laravel Vapor, the official serverless deployment platform, aiming to make “serverless Laravel a breeze” for developers.

Joe’s work enables Laravel applications to run at scale on AWS without managing servers, a significant shift in how Laravel apps can be deployed and scaled. Beyond Vapor, Dixon contributes to framework improvements (especially around cloud integrations and queues) and maintains various Laravel packages. He is also known for his educational content on deployment and cloud architecture, sharing insights from his work at Laravel through conference talks and blog posts.

His efforts ensure Laravel remains relevant in modern DevOps and cloud environments.

Mior Muhammad Zaki

Nationality: Malaysian

Mior is a long-time Laravel core contributor and the maintainer of the Orchestra components that underlie parts of Laravel’s testing and extension systems.

Based in Malaysia, he has been involved with Laravel since the early days and formally joined the Laravel team as a developer. Mior’s work often happens behind the scenes – for example, he maintains Orchestra Testbench, which allows package developers to test their Laravel integrations easily. He also contributed to many minor framework enhancements (from enum casting to pipeline improvements) as noted in Laravel’s release notes.

Quiet but prolific, Mior represents the global nature of Laravel’s contributor base and is proof that one can have massive impact on an open-source project from anywhere in the world.

Marcel Pociot

Marcel Pociot - Laravel Devs: Meet Top 20 Experts

Nationality: German

Marcel is a renowned Laravel package author and the founder of Beyond Code, a company dedicated to building developer tools.

He has created numerous beloved Laravel utilities – for example, BotMan (a chatbot framework), Laravel WebSockets (real-time server implementation), Tinkerwell (a desktop REPL for Laravel), and Laravel Herd (a quick local dev environment). Marcel’s products fill crucial gaps and enhance developer productivity, often blurring the line between open-source and commercial tools in the Laravel ecosystem. As Beyond Code’s CTO, he leads a team that consistently delivers high-quality software for Laravel artisans.

Pociot is also an active educator, sharing insights via blog posts, conference talks, and even live coding streams, making advanced Laravel features more approachable for all.

Povilas Korop

Nationality: Lithuanian

Povilas is the creator of Laravel Daily, one of the most popular Laravel tutorial blogs and YouTube channels globally. What began in 2015 as a small personal blog “grew into a hub of useful information” for Laravel at all levels.

Through Laravel Daily, Povilas has published thousands of tips, code examples, and premium tutorials, as well as dozens of video courses, making Laravel knowledge accessible to developers worldwide. He is particularly known for practical content like weekly Laravel tips newsletters, open-source project examples, and package showcases. Povilas also actively engages with the community via Twitter and YouTube, where he interacts with developers and provides quick insights.

His consistent output (20+ new tutorials per week) and approachable teaching style have earned him a loyal following and a place among Laravel’s top educators.

Jess Archer

Nationality: Australian

Jess is a Laravel core team member and an inspiring figure for women in tech within the Laravel community. A full-stack developer by background, Jess has contributed to Laravel’s core and is co-author of Laravel’s official Visual Studio Code extension, enhancing the developer experience in code editors.

She’s also known for open-source tools like Laravel Excel (for which she contributed early on) and for innovating patterns such as using Blade components in new ways. Archer frequently speaks at Laracons and user groups, sharing her deep knowledge of Laravel and modern PHP. As a self-described maker and podcaster, she brings creativity to solving problems – recently demonstrated by “Nightwatch”, a new Laravel server monitoring tool she helped build.

Jess’s contributions and visibility help encourage diverse participation in the Laravel ecosystem.

Wrap Up

These legends represent exceptional talent, making them extremely challenging to headhunt. However, there are thousands of other highly skilled IT professionals available to hire with our help. Contact us, and we will be happy to discuss your hiring needs.

Note: We’ve dedicated significant time and effort to creating and verifying this curated list of top talent. However, if you believe a correction or addition is needed, feel free to reach out. We’ll gladly review and update the page.

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