Senior PHP Backend Engineer for Distributed Systems

Airalo; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 92,000 - 135,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote work in UK

On-call rotation with paid standbyFees

Job summary

Airalo is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to lead the evolution of our global platform serving millions of users. You will drive high-performance PHP backends, with Laravel and Symfony expertise, across a remote UK-focused team.

You will shape distributed systems, SOA transitions, and coding standards while mentoring peers and balancing innovation with stability. You will work with Product and DevOps to translate requirements into scalable roadmaps, ensuring robust performance, security, and

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional backend development experience with a deep mastery of PHP
• 4+ years of building enterprise-grade applications in Laravel or an equivalent senior background in Symfony
• Mastery of distributed systems, event-driven architecture, and messaging patterns like SQS or Pub/Sub
• AI Proficiency: Ability to effectively use AI tools during technical tasks; we value engineers who know how to prompt, validate, and iterate with AI to build better software faster
• Knowledge of SQL and NoSQL including performance tuning and handling transactions at scale
• Experience architecting on AWS and managing containerized environments with Docker
• A champion of clean code, automated testing, and CI/CD best practices
• Fluent English with the ability to explain complex technical trade-offs to stakeholders

Responsibilities

• Lead the design of high-performance distributed systems capable of handling global traffic
• Develop and refine services to improve scalability and efficiency
• Drive the transition toward a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to ensure modularity and resilience
• Set the bar for code quality by enforcing SOLID principles, design patterns, and testing standards
• Actively coach mid-level engineers through deep code reviews and technical knowledge sharing
• Identify bottlenecks in services and implement advanced caching and database strategies
• Partner with Product and DevOps to translate complex requirements into scalable technical roadmaps

Skills

PHP

Laravel

Symfony

Distributed systems

SQL/NoSQL

CI/CD

Testing

English

Tools

Docker

AWS

SQS

Job description

Airalo is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to lead the evolution of our global platform serving millions of users. You will drive high-performance PHP backends, with Laravel and Symfony expertise, across a remote UK-focused team.

You will shape distributed systems, SOA transitions, and coding standards while mentoring peers and balancing innovation with stability. You will work with Product and DevOps to translate requirements into scalable roadmaps, ensuring robust performance, security, and