Senior Backend Engineer — AI API, Laravel, AWS (Miami)

Wag Walking; Miami (FL); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical Insurance

On-site parking

Breakfast & Lunch daily

Wellness stipend

Life Insurance

Disability insurance

401(k) with employer match

11 company holidays

Job summary

Wag! Group Co. is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join our backend team in downtown Miami. This full-time, in-person role focuses on enhancing our core backend API and cloud infrastructure, with a emphasis on AI tooling integration for development workflows.

You will work across PHP/Laravel, Python, and AWS, building scalable systems, refining architecture, and owning deployments in a fast-paced startup environment. Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States.

Qualifications

• Significant experience building and operating scalable backend systems in production.
• Experience building software with AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex. Be prepared to discuss specifics: features you shipped with agent assistance, the workflows or tooling you built to make agents effective on a large codebase, and where you decided not to rely on them.
• Proficiency in PHP, ideally Laravel, and working proficiency in Python.
• Experience with event-driven and queue-based architectures, particularly AWS SQS.
• Experience running containerized services in production, ideally on ECS.
• Ability to work in-person 5x a week in our downtown Miami office

Responsibilities

• Own the backend platform, from the client-facing API schema to the server and database infrastructure in AWS.
• Contribute to architectural and design decisions, and explain the tradeoffs.
• Break down features into releasable components, estimate release schedules, and collaborate with the team.
• Design and implement core products within our PHP and Laravel API, working from an OpenAPI specification in a domain-driven, service and repository architecture.
• Build and enhance internal backend systems in Python, including our AWS Lambda services, and collaborate with other business units.
• Support the production infrastructure by implementing and maintaining AWS services using Terraform, including ECS, Lambda, API Gateway, SQS, Parameter Store, CloudWatch, and IAM.
• Participate in production monitoring and incident response, designing the necessary tools and processes.
• Integrate AI-powered solutions directly into the product.
• Build and improve the agent workflows, context, and tooling that let the team develop effectively with AI in a large codebase.

Skills

Backend scalability

AI coding agents experience

PHP / Laravel

Python

AWS SQS

ECS

Docker

GitLab CI/CD

In-person collaboration

OpenAPI

Tools

OpenAPI

Job description

Wag! Group Co. is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join our backend team in downtown Miami. This full-time, in-person role focuses on enhancing our core backend API and cloud infrastructure, with a emphasis on AI tooling integration for development workflows.

You will work across PHP/Laravel, Python, and AWS, building scalable systems, refining architecture, and owning deployments in a fast-paced startup environment. Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States.