Senior Software Engineer (PHP)
Hybrid,
Office,
Remote
Ukraine
We are looking for a Senior PHP Laravel Engineer to help design, build, and evolve a suite of backend services powering our platform. This role is ideal for an engineer with deep Laravel expertise, strong architectural thinking, and experience transforming business requirements into technical solutions. You will work on modernizing legacy components, building new functionality, and ensuring the stability, performance, and scalability of our backend ecosystem.
This is a backend-focused position — no frontend or DevOps responsibilities, though basic infrastructure and cloud knowledge is a strong advantage.
Requirements:
- 5+ years of PHP development with deep expertise in Laravel framework internals (contracts, services, providers, events/listeners, custom collections etc.).
- Strong experience with private package development and reusable Laravel components.
- Proficiency in PHPUnit (HTTP tests, feature tests, third-party integrations, mocking, data providers).
- Solid understanding of DDD (Domain-Driven Design) concepts and their application in service architecture.
- Proven experience building microservices or SOA systems, including inter-service communication patterns.
- REST API expertise, including authentication flows, pagination, error handling, API versioning, and best practices.
- Strong SQL knowledge and deep practical experience with MySQL, query optimization, indexing, transactions, and data modeling.
- Hands-on experience with Redis (caching, queues, locks, rate limiting).
- Experience with message brokers such as AWS SQS, RabbitMQ, or any AMQP-compatible system.
- Familiarity with AWS services (SNS, SQS) and containerized development using Docker; experience with Kubernetes or Terraform is a plus.
- Strong understanding of Git, branching strategies, and CI/CD workflows in an Agile environment.
- Excellent problem-solving, communication, and architectural skills, with the ability to justify technical decisions and collaborate effectively with leads.
Responsibilities:
- Lead backend development using PHP and Laravel, designing scalable architecture and ensuring code quality across services.
- Translate business requirements into technical designs, collaborating closely with product, BA, and engineering leads.
- Own end-to-end service development: from design and implementation to testing, deployment support, and operational improvements.
- Build and maintain RESTful APIs with strong focus on performance, reliability, and backward compatibility.
- Modernize and refactor legacy components, improving maintainability, testability, and system performance.
- Design and build microservices and SOA-based solutions, applying DDD principles where appropriate.
- Implement asynchronous processing using message brokers (SQS, RabbitMQ, AMQP-based systems).
- Optimize SQL queries and database schema, ensuring high performance and efficient MySQL usage.
- Contribute to internal tooling, private packages, and reusable components to accelerate platform development.
- Collaborate with PHP leads and architects, providing clear arguments, technical reasoning, and proactive improvement suggestions.
What we offer:
- Annual paid vacation of 18 working days.
- Extra vacation days for long-lasting cooperation.
- Annual paid sick leave of 10 days.
- Maternity/Paternity leave.
- The opportunity for sabbatical leave.
- Marriage and Parenthood Package.
- Compensation for sports activities (up to 250$ per year) or health insurance covering (70%) — after the trial period.
- Internal education(corporate library, Udemy courses).
- Career development plan.
- English and Spanish classes.
- Paying taxes and managing PE (Private Entrepreneur).
- Technical equipment.
- Internal Referral program.
- Opportunity to take part in company volunteering activities.
- Sombra is a “Friendly to Veterans” award-holder.
