Senior PHP Engineer - Scalable API & MySQL Expert

Kforce Inc; West Palm Beach (FL); On-site; USD 110,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Kforce Inc is seeking a Senior Software Engineer PHP in West Palm Beach, FL to design, develop, and maintain high-performance PHP applications serving millions of API requests daily.

You will optimize MySQL schemas, build RESTful APIs with OpenAPI standards, and implement asynchronous workflows using Redis, RabbitMQ, Kafka, SQS, and Redis Streams, while collaborating across distributed teams.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software development experience with strong proficiency in modern PHP (PHP 8+) and common frameworks such as Laravel, Symfony, or Slim.
• Deep expertise in MySQL including query optimization and schema design for high-traffic applications.
• Strong experience designing and implementing RESTful APIs using modern standards.
• Experience with Redis for caching, distributed locking, queues, and performance optimization.
• Familiarity with message queues and asynchronous processing systems such as RabbitMQ, Kafka, SQS, or Redis Streams.
• Proficiency with containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience with logging, monitoring, tracing, and observability tooling (Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, etc.).
• Understanding of API security best practices including OAuth2, JWT, RBAC, rate limiting, and OWASP principles.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure platforms (Vultr, AWS, GCP, or Azure) and infrastructure-as-code tooling.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing frameworks, and Git-based development workflows.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate effectively across distributed teams.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain high-performance PHP applications serving millions of API requests daily
• Architect and optimize MySQL database schemas, queries, and indexing strategies for low-latency access
• Implement and maintain RESTful APIs following modern API design standards, including OpenAPI specifications and versioning
• Design and implement asynchronous workflows, background jobs, queues, and event-driven integrations where appropriate
• Participate in architecture discussions, incident response, and root-cause analysis for production issues
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams to define technical requirements and deliver scalable solutions
• Conduct code reviews, mentor junior engineers, and champion engineering best practices
• Write clean, well-tested code with comprehensive unit and integration test coverage

Skills

PHP

Laravel

Symfony

Slim

MySQL

RESTful APIs

OpenAPI

Redis

RabbitMQ

Kafka

SQS

Redis Streams

Docker

Kubernetes

Datadog

Prometheus

Grafana

OpenTelemetry

OAuth2

JWT

RBAC

OWASP

AWS

GCP

Azure

IaC

CI/CD

Git

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Redis

RabbitMQ

Kafka

SQS

Redis Streams

OpenTelemetry

Job description

Kforce Inc is seeking a Senior Software Engineer PHP in West Palm Beach, FL to design, develop, and maintain high-performance PHP applications serving millions of API requests daily.

You will optimize MySQL schemas, build RESTful APIs with OpenAPI standards, and implement asynchronous workflows using Redis, RabbitMQ, Kafka, SQS, and Redis Streams, while collaborating across distributed teams.