Senior Back-End Developer (PHP)

Covermanager; Barcelona; Hybrid; EUR 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid model: 2 days/week in Barcelona

Bootcamp onboarding

Impactful product experience

AI-assisted development

International environment

Growth opportunities

Job summary

CoverManager is seeking a Senior Backend Developer to join our Product & Tech team, helping evolve a large PHP-based platform used by restaurants to manage reservations, customers and operations. You will focus on backend systems, concurrency, and real-time performance while collaborating with product, engineering and infrastructure teams.

You will work in a hybrid model with two days per week in Barcelona or Seville offices and the rest remotely, using Spanish and English.

Qualifications

• 5–7+ years of professional experience as a backend developer.
• Strong experience with PHP.
• Experience with Laravel or CodeIgniter.
• Experience with frontend frameworks and contributing to frontend development.
• Strong SQL experience (MySQL or similar).
• Experience working in complex or high-traffic systems.
• Experience writing unit and integration tests.
• Experience working in Agile environments (Scrum / Kanban).
• Advanced English (C1 or higher) with strong communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Deliver features in the reservation and restaurant management systems end-to-end, with quality and tests.
• Keep the platform fast, stable and scalable under high traffic and concurrency.
• Help evolve the architecture towards a more modular platform and reduce technical debt.
• Design, develop and maintain backend services and core platform components.
• Implement new features and improvements in the reservation and restaurant management systems.
• Ensure performance, reliability and scalability of backend systems.
• Contribute to architectural improvements and system evolution.
• Write clean, maintainable and well-tested code.
• Participate in code reviews and technical discussions.
• Collaborate with product managers and engineers to deliver features end-to-end.
• Identify technical improvements and help reduce technical debt.

Skills

5–7+ years

PHP

Laravel

CodeIgniter

Frontend frameworks

SQL databases

Unit tests

Agile (Scrum/Kanban)

English (C1+)

Tools

Docker

AWS

CI/CD (Jenkins/Bitbucket)

Job description

About CoverManager

Imagine working in an environment that feels like the best dinner you have ever had: dynamic, human and built on passion. Hospitality Tech Group (HTG) combines the strengths of Zenchef and CoverManager, two complementary leaders joining forces as a global, independent technology team for hospitality. We operate through Zenchef in France, Benelux and the DACH region, and through CoverManager in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and LATAM.

We bring restaurants and their guests closer through technology, and our heart beats for hospitality. Because progress is our compass, and we always move forward together.

Feeling hungry? Take a seat, especially if your favorite plan is going out for dinner.

Our values:

Hospitality at heart: We are hospitality experts who bring genuine care and deep industry knowledge to everything we do, for our customers and for each other.

Better together: We put people first and win as one team, supporting each other, learning from each other and continuously improving through shared knowledge and feedback.

Progress over perfection: We believe in the power of progress. We prioritize action over idealism to unlock our full potential and achieve extraordinary results.

Hospitality at heart — Your purpose

We are looking for a Senior Backend Developer to join our Product & Tech team and contribute to the development and evolution of our SaaS platform used by restaurants to manage reservations, customer relationships and operations.

You will work on backend systems that support high volumes of reservations and real-time operations, contributing to the scalability, reliability and evolution of the platform.

The role involves working on a large production system with significant traffic and concurrency, collaborating closely with product managers, engineers and other teams to deliver high-impact features and continuously improve the architecture.

The problem this role solves

Our core platform is a large PHP system that handles reservations for thousands of restaurants, with peaks of traffic that put real pressure on it. We are modernizing it step by step while the business keeps growing and the merger with Zenchef brings new integrations and markets. We need experienced backend engineers who keep the platform reliable today and make it easier to evolve tomorrow.

What success looks like

At 30 days: you are onboarded, you know the codebase and our delivery flow, you have shipped your first small changes to production and you take part in code reviews.

At 90 days: you own a feature or a technical improvement from design to production, you work autonomously with your squad and you have proposed at least one improvement in performance, reliability or technical debt.

Better together — Your team

You will join one of our technical squads (such as CoverBooking or Payments) inside the Product & Tech team. Each squad works with a Tech Lead, a Product Manager and a group of backend and frontend engineers, so decisions are made close to the code and to the customer.

You will report to the Operational Lead for Tech, and work every day with product managers, other squads and the infrastructure team. We work in a hybrid model, with two days a week in our Barcelona or Seville office and the rest remotely, in a mix of Spanish and English, with a culture of code review, shared knowledge and honest feedback.

You will also be part of the Hospitality Tech Group, working alongside Zenchef engineers on shared initiatives.

Progress over perfection — What you will do

Your first weeks

• Set up your local environment, get access to our tools and follow our onboarding plan with your squad

• Review the architecture of the platform and the code of your squad with the help of a teammate

• Fix small bugs and ship low risk improvements to production

• Join code reviews, incident follow ups and the squad ceremonies

Your key responsibilities

• Deliver features in the reservation and restaurant management systems end-to-end, with quality and tests

• Keep the platform fast, stable and scalable under high traffic and concurrency

• Help evolve the architecture towards a more modular platform and reduce technical debt

Day to day

• Design, develop and maintain backend services and core platform components

• Implement new features and improvements in the reservation and restaurant management systems

• Ensure performance, reliability and scalability of backend systems

• Contribute to architectural improvements and system evolution

• Write clean, maintainable and well-tested code

• Participate in code reviews and technical discussions

• Collaborate with product managers and engineers to deliver features end-to-end

• Identify technical improvements and help reduce technical debt

Out of scope

• Infrastructure and DevOps ownership, which belongs to the infrastructure team (although you will work with it)

• People management, since this is an individual contributor role

• First line customer support, which is handled by our support teams before issues reach Tech

Your secret ingredient — What you will bring

You are one of us if your heart beats for hospitality. If you are generous with your help and honest with your feedback. If your mind lights up with new knowledge and you move forward with determination. Are you the person who books the restaurant and picks the wine? Then you will feel right at home with us. You also bring:

• 5–7+ years of professional experience as a backend developer

• Strong experience with PHP

• Experience working with frameworks such as Laravel or CodeIgniter

• Experience working with frontend frameworks and contributing to frontend development

• Solid experience with SQL databases (MySQL or similar)

• Experience working in complex or high-traffic systems

• Experience writing unit and integration tests

• Experience working in Agile environments (Scrum / Kanban)

• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work collaboratively in engineering teams

• Advanced level of English (C1 or higher) with strong communication skills, both written and spoken

Nice to have:

• Experience working in a SaaS platform

• Experience with Domain Driven Design (DDD)

• Experience with microservices or modular architectures

• Experience migrating or evolving monolithic systems

• Experience with CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, Bitbucket Pipelines or similar)

• Experience with AWS infrastructure (EC2, RDS, MQ, etc.)

• Familiarity with Docker

• Basic knowledge of JavaScript / React

Our secret ingredient — Benefits

• Hybrid model: two days a week in our Barcelona or Seville office and the rest working remotely

• Onboarding plan with a dedicated bootcamp and a buddy from your squad

• Work on a product with real impact on thousands of restaurants and high traffic volumes

• Modern way of working with AI assisted development, supported by clear guardrails and code reviews

• International environment as part of the Hospitality Tech Group, with Zenchef and CoverManager teams

• Room to grow technically as the platform and the engineering organization evolve