Senior PHP Backend Engineer - Remote, Scale & Microservices

Logoslabs; San Francisco (CA); Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Smart Working is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to take end-to-end ownership of mature production systems, focusing on PHP backends, migrations to Laravel, and data-intensive workflows. You will work with a small, highly senior team, driving API development and production reliability across geo-distributed environments.

The role emphasizes security, GDPR, and scalable data processing for large-scale SaaS, with collaboration on AI-related backend work and a focus on rapid ramp-up to the

Qualifications

• 8+ years of commercial PHP backend development at Expert level.
• 5+ years of experience with large-scale SaaS or complex production systems at Expert level.
• 3+ years of PostgreSQL experience at Advanced level.
• 5+ years of API design and third-party integration experience at Advanced level.
• 3+ years of high-volume data processing experience at Advanced level; IoT or device data ingestion may substitute.
• 3+ years of Laravel and/or Yii2 experience at Advanced level.
• 3+ years of PHPUnit experience at Advanced level.
• 2+ years of microservices or monolith-decomposition experience at Intermediate level.
• 2+ years of AWS experience at Intermediate level; Azure or GCP may substitute.
• Experience in telematics, fleet or logistics domain at Intermediate level; IoT/GPS location experience may substitute.
• Experience with video/CCTV or large media file handling at Intermediate level.
• Ability to take end-to-end ownership of mature production systems with strong technical judgement.
• Experience with complex systems matters more than years alone.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the PHP backend that ingests GPS and telematics data, safety hardware events and DVR video, and sends real-time alerts.
• Build and maintain APIs used by the web platform, mobile app and integration partners.
• Lead the Yii2-to-Laravel migration and the Yii2 end-of-life transition timeline.
• Oversee MariaDB-to-PostgreSQL migration efforts.
• Support decomposition of the monolith into microservices.
• Take over systems from a retiring contractor and ramp up quickly.
• Collaborate on AI product line backend with computer vision lead.
• Take end-to-end ownership of production systems.
• Work independently within a small senior team; collaborate on AI tasks.
• Apply architectural judgement to microservices and migrations with data integrity focus.
• Work within Bitbucket Pipelines and PHPUnit with lightweight processes.
• Contribute as a senior problem-solver in production decisions.
• Ramp up quickly for the required start date handling production used by local authorities.

Skills

PHP backend

APIs design

Microservices

Data processing

IoT/GPS data

Security/GDPR

Computer vision collaboration

Problem-solving

Tools

Laravel

Yii2

PostgreSQL

MariaDB

Bitbucket Pipelines

PHPUnit

AWS

Azure

GCP

GitHub Actions

GitLab CI

Jenkins

Job description

Smart Working is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to take end-to-end ownership of mature production systems, focusing on PHP backends, migrations to Laravel, and data-intensive workflows. You will work with a small, highly senior team, driving API development and production reliability across geo-distributed environments.

The role emphasizes security, GDPR, and scalable data processing for large-scale SaaS, with collaboration on AI-related backend work and a focus on rapid ramp-up to the