Lead Backend Engineer (PHP) – Remote, Scalable Systems

Commerce; Texas; Remote; USD 182,000 - 259,000; Full time

Job summary

Commerce is seeking a Lead Software Engineer - Backend to shape technical direction for a scalable, AI-driven commerce ecosystem. You will own end-to-end execution, lead architectural discussions, and drive improvements across CI/CD and deployment pipelines.

Ideal candidates have 7+ years in backend development, deep PHP expertise, strong MySQL and caching knowledge, and experience with cloud platforms, observability, and modern DevOps practices.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of programming experience in backend languages.
• Strong experience with PHP is required (Experience with Python, GoLang, Java or a similar language is a bonus).
• Extensive experience with MySQL or a similar technology, paired with a strong understanding of database schema design, caching and scalability.
• Strong understanding of various communication protocols (TCP, gRPC, etc) and Distributed Systems.
• Ability to perform time and memory complexity analysis.
• Experience in caching technologies (e.g. Redis or Memcached).
• DevOps experience is highly preferred.
• Solid understanding of Linux operating systems and experience with modern CI/CD and containerization tools like Docker.
• Experience with Cloud solutions (GCP highly preferred)
• Experience with Full-stack observability frameworks and tools (OTel highly preferred)
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S.

Responsibilities

• Define the technical vision to advance the domain and engage with Staff Engineers to deliver projects aligned to the platform vision.
• Design and implement high-quality solutions to the most complex and ambiguous problems in the domain, with focus on scalability and high availability.
• Own end-to-end technical project execution, including scoping, sequencing, forecasting ECDs, and driving delivery towards deadlines.
• Participate in RFCs and architectural discussions, evaluating and recommending tools, technologies, and processes that solve concrete business problems.
• Own and represent deep SME across complex and sophisticated areas, guiding design decisions and influencing technical direction.
• Proactively monitor the state of the team's services and recommend optimizations based on data.
• Advocate for practices and implement tooling to enable others, leveraging automation to enhance the robustness of the CI/CD pipeline, thereby streamlining efficient application development and deployment.
• Be a champion for Continuous Improvement in end-to-end infrastructure and systems, including conducting post-mortems to analyze and prevent repeat failures.
• Act as a dedicated mentor to multiple mentees, providing insightful feedback about teammates to help them excel.
• Drive team-level education and documentation practices to foster a culture of shared learning.
• Proactively identify and build important relationships with partner teams to ensure cross-functional alignment.

Skills

Backend programming

PHP

Distributed systems

Linux

Cloud (GCP)

Performance analysis

CI/CD

Education

BS in Computer Science

Tools

Docker

Redis / Memcached

MySQL

gRPC

OTel

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Commerce is seeking a Lead Software Engineer - Backend to shape technical direction for a scalable, AI-driven commerce ecosystem. You will own end-to-end execution, lead architectural discussions, and drive improvements across CI/CD and deployment pipelines.

Ideal candidates have 7+ years in backend development, deep PHP expertise, strong MySQL and caching knowledge, and experience with cloud platforms, observability, and modern DevOps practices.