Senior PHP Engineer

Airalo; Glasgow; Remote; GBP 92,000 - 135,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

On-call rotation with standby fees + O

Rest & Recovery after night incidents

Shared load: weekday/weekend rotations

Job summary

Airalo is hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to evolve our global platform serving 30M+ users. You will lead distributed systems, balance rapid innovation with stability, and apply architectural rigor across Laravel and Symfony in a remote UK setting.

Strong coaching, SOA movement, and cloud/delivery discipline are valued. You'll collaborate with Product and DevOps, drive high-quality, scalable services, and maintain system reliability.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional backend development with PHP.
• 4+ years building enterprise apps in Laravel or Symfony.
• Mastery of distributed systems and event-driven architectures.
• AI proficiency: using AI tools to aid development and validation.
• SQL and NoSQL performance tuning and transactional handling.
• Experience on AWS and containerized environments (Docker).
• Commitment to clean code, automated testing, and CI/CD practices.
• Fluent English and ability to explain trade-offs to stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead design of high-performance distributed systems for global traffic.
• Develop and refine services to improve scalability and efficiency.
• Drive transition to SOA for modularity and resilience.
• Set code quality standards including SOLID, patterns, and testing.
• Coach mid-level engineers through code reviews and knowledge sharing.
• Identify bottlenecks and apply advanced caching and DB strategies.
• Collaborate with Product and DevOps to translate requirements into roadmaps.

Skills

PHP

Laravel

Symfony

AWS

Docker

CI/CD

English

Job description

Help Us Build The Future of Travel

At Airalo, we make it easier for people to stay connected wherever they travel. As the world's first eSIM store, we help millions of travelers access mobile data in over 200 countries and regions.

We’re a fully remote team of 400+ people across 60+ countries, building a product used at a global scale every day. Work here is structured but fast-moving, with clear ownership and the space to make decisions without unnecessary layers.

For many people joining us from the UK, it’s the combination that stands out: transparency, meaningful autonomy, and the ability to do high impact work without in office constraints.

Your Next Destination

• Location: Remote, anywhere in the UK.
• Contract: Full-time, permanent.
• Benefits: Learn more about our benefits here in this link - https://airalo-public.notion.site/Benefits-25396a97ffca81fb9bc1f0be479f1be3?pvs=74
• Languages: English is our main working language day to day, so you'll need to be comfortable communicating in it both in meetings and async.

Benefits

Curious what it's actually like to work at Airalo? We've put together a guide for each of the hubs we hire from most, covering our benefits, remote culture, employment setup, and what our team values most:

• Life at Airalo
• España : https://airalo-public.notion.site/life-at-airalo-espana
• Life at Airalo
• United Kingdom : https://airalo-public.notion.site/life-at-airalo-united-kingdom
• Life at Airalo
• United Arab Emirates : https://airalo-public.notion.site/life-at-airalo-united-arab-emirates

Are you a seasoned engineer who thrives on solving complex architectural puzzles in PHP? Join our team as a Senior Backend Engineer where you will lead the evolution of our global platform with more than 30 million users. We value deep technical mastery, a mentor mindset, and the ability to balance rapid innovation with system stability. While we use Laravel, we highly value the architectural rigor of seasoned Symfony experts ready to pick up Laravel and apply their skills to our ecosystem.

Your Main Responsibilities Will Be To

• 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

Does This Sound Like You

• 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

Bonus

• Experience with SaaS/PaaS, SOA, or microservices architecture.
• Experience with eSIM, or GSMA technologies.
• Familiarity with Traveltech solutions.
• Experience in building or maintaining custom SDKs would be a plus

£91,600 - £135,000 a year

At Airalo, we believe in roaming-free recruitment. Just as we provide clear connectivity for travelers, we provide clear salary ranges for our candidates.

Given this role is remote and available to candidates across some countries in Europe, this range represents the full salary range for this role across our available locations in the EU. To ensure equity based on where you reside we use a tiered location model:

UK: £91,600 to £135,000

Your Home Destination: Specific salary ranges used in offers are determined by where you reside. We’re committed to discussing these ranges openly during your first call with our Talent to ensure we’re aligned for takeoff!

Please be aware that we can only consider candidates for this role who already reside and are fully eligible to work in the UK.

Why People Join Us In the UK

We started Airalo to make staying connected effortless, wherever you are in the world. Today, millions of travelers rely on our eSIMs, and many of the people building the product first discovered us as customers.

Our team spans 60+ countries, but what people often notice quickly is how work actually feels here. There’s trust to own what you do, space to focus without constant layers of process, and a clear sense of what you’re responsible for from day one.

As Airalo continues to grow, people tend to stay for a mix of things: the chance to work on a product used globally, the autonomy to shape how they work, and the opportunity to keep taking on new challenges without getting stuck in one lane.

On-Call

Participating in our on-call rotation is a core expectation of this role. It's essential for maintaining 24/7 service reliability across our global operations, ensuring our systems remain resilient and our customers experience uninterrupted service, regardless of time zone or geography.

• Paid Rotation: We offer standby fees + overtime pay.
• Delayed Start: No on-call duties for your first 6 months.
• Rest & Recovery: Guaranteed rest periods and flexible hours following night incidents.
• Shared Load: Rotations are split (Weekdays vs. Weekends) to minimize fatigue.

Please refer to the On-Call Policy in the Airalo Handbook for full details: https://airalo-public.notion.site/our-approach-to-engineering-on-call-policy

Before You Hit Apply

By applying, you acknowledge and agree that, in case of successful application, Airalo may request to run background checks as a condition for entering into an agreement with you. Rest assured that these checks will only occur upon your prior consent and at the end of the selection process, and will be strictly limited to what is allowed under the laws that are applicable to you. All data that you share or that we collect in connection with such checks will be processed in accordance with our Privacy Policy, available here: www.airalo.com/more-info/privacy-policy?srsltid=AfmBOooBT0rXAj1FaNelZ3VfN0wvhwzvAoxdtHnOKSVETpiSjiXVuycy

We sincerely thank all applicants in advance for submitting their interest in this opportunity. Airalo is an equal-opportunity employer and values diversity, equity & inclusion. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations upon request for individuals with disabilities throughout our job interview process.

At Airalo, we use AI-assisted tools as part of our recruitment process. Your application will be reviewed using tools that help our recruiters analyze and organize CV information. These tools support, but do not replace human judgment; all hiring decisions are made by humans. If you progress to an interview, we may use tools to generate AI-assisted notes – you can opt out of these. For more information on how we handle your data, please see our Privacy Policy: https://www.airalo.com/more-info/privacy-policy.