Senior Backend Engineer - AI-Driven Multi-Tenant SaaS

Element451; United States; On-site; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Element451 is recruiting a senior backend engineer to own end-to-end services in a multi-tenant SaaS platform for higher education. You will design, implement, and operate PHP/Laravel services with attention to correctness, performance, and security, integrating AI tooling thoughtfully across development and production.

The role emphasizes ownership, architectural visibility, and mentoring teammates while maintaining high standards and producing reliable systems at scale.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional backend engineering in a complex, multi-tenant SaaS product.
• Deep expertise in PHP and Laravel with focus on performance and domain design.
• Experience building async, event-driven systems and API versioning.

Responsibilities

• Designing and building backend services with clear domain boundaries and test coverage.
• Own data layer design and migrations for multi-tenant workloads; ensure performance at scale.
• Implement and operate third-party integrations (e.g., Stripe, Google, Outlook) and maintain secure tenant isolation.
• Lead technical design within your area, mentor engineers, and drive architectural improvements.

Skills

PHP/Laravel

Backend engineering

MongoDB

AWS

APIs

SQS

Testing

AI tooling

Tools

NestJS

Sentry

CloudWatch

Job description

Element451 is recruiting a senior backend engineer to own end-to-end services in a multi-tenant SaaS platform for higher education. You will design, implement, and operate PHP/Laravel services with attention to correctness, performance, and security, integrating AI tooling thoughtfully across development and production.

The role emphasizes ownership, architectural visibility, and mentoring teammates while maintaining high standards and producing reliable systems at scale.