TrustPatrick
A contractor-matching and verification platform that connects homeowners with vetted professionals and manages contractor applications, payments and follow-up workflows.
- My role
- Backend Developer / Software Engineer
- Timeframe
- 2025–present
- Team
- Cross-functional development team at Octopi Digital LLC
Overview
TrustPatrick connects homeowners with vetted contractors. Behind the public site, the platform manages contractor applications, payments and the follow-up that keeps each application moving.
I work on the Laravel/PHP backend: application and payment workflows, automated reminders, background processing and production support.
The problem
A contractor application has several steps, including documents, background checks, approvals and payments. The platform has to track each one and follow up automatically when something is missing or unpaid.
My role
What I did
- Developed and maintained Laravel/PHP backend functionality for contractor and homeowner workflows.
- Implemented application and payment workflows, including multi-step membership and training payment processing.
- Built automated email reminders for missing background checks, documents, approvals and unpaid invoices.
- Integrated SendGrid for transactional email and maintained the background processing behind automated workflows.
- Investigated and resolved production issues involving queued/background workers and lead-processing workflows.
- Maintained and optimized MySQL-backed functionality and production server processes.
What the wider team did
- Frontend and UI implementation.
- Product requirements and other platform functionality.
Technical approach
The platform is a Laravel application backed by MySQL. Payment steps update application and payment records, and those records drive the automated reminders.
Email and lead processing run in Laravel queue workers, which send transactional email through SendGrid. Admin actions update an application's status, which triggers the matching follow-ups.
Architecture and integrations
Text version of the diagram
Homeowners, contractors and admins use a Laravel application backed by MySQL. A payment flow writes application and payment records, and queue workers use those records for reminders and lead processing, sending email through SendGrid.
- Homeowners & contractors → Laravel application: HTTPS
- Admin workflows → Laravel application
- Laravel application → Payment flow
- Laravel application → MySQL
- Payment flow → MySQL: records
- MySQL → Queue workers: reminders
- Queue workers → SendGrid
Challenges and solutions
A deployed fix that wasn't running
Challenge: A production fix had been deployed, but a continuously running background worker hadn't been restarted, so it kept executing the previous code.
Solution: The worker processes were restarted so the deployed fix took effect in production.
Outcome
- Live production platform supporting homeowner-to-contractor matching, contractor applications, payments and automated operational workflows.
Technology stack
- PHP
- Laravel
- MySQL
- SendGrid
- Webhooks
- Linux VPS
- PHP-FPM
- Supervisor
- Git
- GitHub
- DigitalOcean