Senior PHP and Moodle contractor, 15+ years. I work with universities, training providers and product teams who need more from their learning platform. Based in Málaga, working across the UK and Europe.
Joe Cape, M.A., M.Sc. · Málaga, Spain · working in English and Spanish
Over 15 years working with Moodle, Totara and other platforms. Clients highlight my straightforward working style and an open line of communication.
If you're not yet sure what you're up against, my first job is to give you clarity.
I know Moodle and Totara inside out, and how to play to their strengths. As an active plugin contributor, I stay close to current best practice. I'll always consider the full business impact and guide you to an informed decision.
No LMS is an island. I have experience connecting Moodle to the systems you already run: SSO, HR and invoicing, Salesforce, SCORM and LTI. I give reliable estimates for any downtime up front, and I work the hours that suit you.
Learners and admin expect to use their phones. I've delivered integrations between Moodle and mobile apps for authentication and richer learning experiences, and I build custom Flutter apps for iOS and Android that connect directly to your platform.
Stack: PHP (Moodle, Totara, Laravel, Symfony, Zend, Joomla!) · MySQL / PostgreSQL · REST & GraphQL · Flutter / Dart · Vue · React · Docker · AWS · Linux/Apache · Git & CI/CD · PRINCE2 Practitioner · Perplexity · Claude
Engineered the technical solution for large LMS migrations for Swedish regional government, including one of 800,000 users and several million enrolments. Built an enrolment plugin in 2015 that I maintained and extended until 2023, by which point it was a core part of the product. On one upgrade the client credited my code quality for development hours coming in significantly under estimate.
An actively used activity plugin in the official Moodle plugin directory — designed, built and maintained by me. If you want to read my code before hiring me, start here.
View on moodle.org →Built the organisation's original Moodle system in 2011 — work the client credited in part for winning Start Up Social Enterprise of the Year in 2012. Fifteen years on they're still running it as a core income stream, and I still advise on it. Their summary is that it 'just works' with minimal maintenance.
Managed a major platform upgrade, course rollover and archiving cycle synchronised with a Windows Server migration, for a campus of 12,000+ students and 1,800 staff. Load-tested with JMeter to keep downtime to a minimum.
Earlier, as a developer at Epic Ltd. / LEO Learning and the University of London Computer Centre, I was lead technical developer on Moodle systems for Aviva plc, the Nursing & Midwifery Council and the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, and helped builed the Individual Learning Planner add-on for Moodle. I also built core backend features of Pi Datametrics and launched Squiddity, my own Flutter app for iOS and Android.
I'm Joe Cape. I started building Moodle systems in 2010, straight out of an M.Sc. in Information System Development, when a Stirling social enterprise needed an online course and I was contracting for a local web agency. I picked Moodle, built their platform, and they're still running it fifteen years later.
Most of my work since has been as a senior contractor: ten years with Aleido Learning in Sweden on Totara / Moodle products for regional government, rewarding work with several UK universities, and plugin and integration work for training providers and product teams. I've acted as sole end-to-end technical lead for organisations with no internal IT function, and as architectural reviewer and lead developer on larger teams.
Working freelance for smaller organisations, I'm often involved well beyond the code - in the instructional design, and the conversations about what a course is actually meant to do. That closeness to the whole learning experience, rather than just the build, shapes the question I keep coming back to: what's it all for? How can EdTech help people learn better, and leave them more capable than they were yesterday?
A plugin gap, an integration that half-works, a migration nobody wants to own, or overflow work you'd rather hand to someone reliable. All welcome. I work at a day rate, remote, across UK and Spanish time zones.