Senior Backend Engineer (Go/PHP) – Payments Platform

Spectrum IT Recruitment; Fareham; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

Spectrum IT Recruitment seeks a Senior Software Engineer to join a payments-focused tech team in Fareham. You will own backend services, collaborating with frontend, DevOps and security specialists to deliver secure, scalable systems processing real financial transactions.

We value deep expertise in Go or PHP, strong API experience and a passion for modern microservices architectures. You’ll work on production-grade platforms with Kubernetes, APIs, and robust testing in a collaborative

Qualifications

• Significant commercial backend software development experience.
• Strong programming experience in Go (Golang) OR PHP.
• For Go developers: experience with concurrency, HTTP services and/or gRPC.
• For PHP developers: strong PHP 8, object-oriented programming, Composer and PHPUnit experience.
• Strong SQL skills and experience with MySQL or similar relational databases.
• Experience designing, developing and integrating REST APIs, gRPC services or webhooks.
• Understanding of API reliability, error handling and secure coding practices.
• Experience writing automated tests and producing high-quality code.
• Familiarity with Git, code reviews and CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to take ownership of technical delivery.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop and maintain backend services using Go and/or PHP.
• Build and enhance integrations with payment processors, fraud prevention services and third-party APIs.
• Develop secure, scalable APIs using REST, gRPC and Protocol Buffers.
• Work with relational and NoSQL databases, including MySQL, Cassandra, ScyllaDB and Elasticsearch.
• Contribute to microservices-based applications deployed using Kubernetes.
• Write clean, maintainable and well-tested code.
• Take ownership of production services, including monitoring, debugging and performance optimisation.
• Modernise existing applications and help reduce technical debt.
• Collaborate with engineering teams on architecture, design and technical improvements.
• Mentor other developers and contribute to engineering best practices.

Skills

Go (Golang)

PHP

REST APIs

gRPC

SQL

CI/CD

Kubernetes

Docker

Git

Microservices

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Git

CI/CD

Job description

Spectrum IT Recruitment seeks a Senior Software Engineer to join a payments-focused tech team in Fareham. You will own backend services, collaborating with frontend, DevOps and security specialists to deliver secure, scalable systems processing real financial transactions.

We value deep expertise in Go or PHP, strong API experience and a passion for modern microservices architectures. You’ll work on production-grade platforms with Kubernetes, APIs, and robust testing in a collaborative