Senior PHP Software Engineer

ByteHire Limited.; United States; Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first environment

Equity in compensation

Generous PTO

Comprehensive health insurance

Simple IRA matching

Job summary

ByteHire Limited, a HealthTech innovator, seeks a senior backend engineer to own and evolve our Symfony-based platform. You will drive architecture for scalable, data-heavy systems, define standards, and mentor a growing team while delivering reliable production services across distributed services and internal APIs.

You will optimize PHP, MySQL, and data pipelines, work with Elasticsearch, Pub/Sub on GCP, and collaborate with frontend and cross-functional partners.

Qualifications

• Extensive backend experience with PHP/Symfony in production
• Strong understanding of scalability, concurrency and reliability
• Experience with data-heavy systems and ingestion pipelines
• Proven ability to mentor engineers and drive technical direction
• Hands-on with distributed systems and event-driven architectures

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve platform architecture within a Symfony-based system
• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and code reviews
• Define and uphold engineering standards and best practices
• Collaborate cross-functionally to deliver scalable solutions
• Take end-to-end ownership of systems, including production support
• Design and build backend services and internal APIs
• Design and optimise relational databases, including query tuning
• Build and scale data ingestion pipelines using Pub/Sub
• Diagnose performance bottlenecks across PHP, MySQL, and pipelines
• Work with Elasticsearch for data serving and search optimisation
• Contribute to frontend where possible, or collaborate with frontend developers
• Experience implementing automated testing strategies

Skills

PHP

Symfony

Backend architecture

Distributed systems

GCP Pub/Sub

Docker

Kubernetes

Performance tuning

API development

Database design

Mentoring

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Elasticsearch

PHPUnit

PHPStan

Psalm

GrumPHP

Blackfire

XHProf

Pub/Sub

Job description

Our client is an innovative HealthTech organisation building scalable, high-performance platforms within a complex, data-rich environment.

Their systems process large volumes of data, integrate across distributed services, and enable efficient, reliable decision-making across critical clinical and operational workflows.

With strong backing and an experienced leadership team, they are continuing to invest heavily in platform scalability, performance, and long-term evolution.

Responsibilities:

• Own and evolve platform architecture within a Symfony-based system, making high-impact decisions across scalability, performance, and maintainability
• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and code reviews
• Define and uphold engineering standards and best practices
• Collaborate cross-functionally to deliver scalable solutions
• Take end-to-end ownership of systems, including production support
• Strong communication skills and ability to work cross-functionally.
• Design and build backend services and internal APIs (service-to-service)
• Design and optimise relational databases, including query tuning, indexing, and performance debugging
• Build and scale data ingestion pipelines and event-driven workflows using GCP Pub/Sub
• Diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks across PHP, MySQL, and data pipelines using tools like Blackfire / XHProf
• Work with Elasticsearch for data serving and fuzzy search, including indexing and data synchronisation
• Contribute to frontend where possible, or collaborate with frontend developers, ensuring smooth backend integration
• Experience implementing automated testing strategies
• Experience mentoring engineers and contributing to technical direction

Key Experience:

• 10+ years backend engineering (production systems)
• Strong PHP and Symfony expertise
• Build and maintain internal APIs
• Strong understanding of scalability, concurrency, and reliability
• Experience with data-heavy systems and ingestion pipelines
• Clear communication and cross-team collaboration
• Experience working with distributed systems and scalable architectures
• Experience with distributed and event-driven systems (Pub/Sub)
• Hands-on GCP (Cloud SQL, Pub/Sub, Redis/Memorystore), or equivalent on other cloud platforms
• Containerised environments (Docker, Kubernetes/GKE/EKS/AKS)
• Testing + quality tooling (PHPUnit, PHPStan, Psalm, GrumPHP)
• Performance tuning and profiling (e.g. Blackfire, XHProf)
• Experience with Elasticsearch, including indexing strategies and search optimisation
• Experience with PHP API Platform
• Familiarity with event-driven systems and asynchronous processing patterns.
• Experience with multi-tenant systems or rules-based configuration models.
• Exposure to frontend UI tooling (EasyAdmin, React, Next.js)
• Experience in improving or formalising load and performance testing practices.

Why Join?

• Highly competitive salary + equity designed to rival top-tier (FAANG-level) compensation
• High-impact Staff role with ownership of a core, data-intensive platform
• Work on complex, large-scale systems (ingestion, performance, distributed architecture)
• Strong engineering culture focused on quality, performance, and pragmatic decision-making
• Remote-first environment with flexibility and autonomy
• Generous Paid Time Off (PTO) to support work-life balance
• Comprehensive health, vision, and dental insurance for you and your family
• Life and disability insurance for financial security
• Simple IRA matching to support long‑term financial goals
• Wellness programs supporting physical and mental health