Senior PHP Backend Engineer

Quick Facts

• Role: Senior Backend Engineer (PHP)
• Focus: scalable, secure, resilient distributed backend services

Description

You will help scale a backend platform for online privacy and personal data protection by designing core application services and eliminating architectural bottlenecks. The role emphasizes reliability, low latency, data security, and end-to-end ownership from technical RFCs and system design through deployment and post-launch stability.

Responsibilities

• Partner with product managers and stakeholders to translate business requirements into scalable technical proposals
• Architect, build, and maintain high-traffic, business-critical backend services
• Drive performance improvements by identifying bottlenecks and optimizing database queries and distributed workflows
• Lead technical decisions across service boundaries, including domain modeling, data persistence, and deployment pipelines
• Improve engineering quality through high-standard code reviews, testing practices, and mentoring

Requirements

• Senior-level production backend experience using PHP (modern 8.x)
• Familiarity or willingness to work with Go or Node.js/TypeScript
• Proven track record designing scalable RESTful APIs and clean domain models/microservice or modular architectures
• Hands-on relational database experience (PostgreSQL, MySQL) with indexing, schema optimization, and caching strategies (e.g., Redis)
• Ability to drive projects end-to-end and make sound trade-offs between speed, scalability, and technical debt
• Mastery of automated testing (unit, integration, end-to-end) and CI/CD pipelines
• Maintainable, well-documented code and strong engineering ownership

Benefits

• Growth and learning opportunities (learning time, conferences, books)
• Health and wellness benefits including workouts, physical coach, gym, and mental health checks
• Choice of tools and technical equipment
• Community and celebrations (yearly workation, team events)
• Commuting support via partial public transport cost compensation
• Work-life balance with office-first model plus up to two remote days/week and broad WFA option
• Premium Surfshark accounts for you and your family/friends
• Gross salary range: 5,600–7,200 EUR/month (Lithuania) or 23,800–33,400 PLN/month (Poland), depending on skills and experience