Remote PHP Backend Engineer — Laravel & APIs

ATS Client; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 480,000 - 680,000; Full time

Job summary

ATS Client is seeking a Mid-Level Backend PHP Developer to join the engineering team. The role focuses on building scalable backend services, RESTful APIs, and clean code in a collaborative, fast-paced environment.

The successful candidate will work across the full development lifecycle, interact with frontend teams and QA, and contribute to performance tuning, testing, and CI/CD processes. Remote-friendly within South Africa with stable connectivity expectations.

Qualifications

• 3+ years' professional PHP development experience.
• OOP & MVC architecture understanding.
• Experience with Laravel or comparable PHP frameworks.
• Strong MySQL skills including design and optimisation.
• Git experience and collaborative workflows.
• Experience building RESTful APIs (JSON/XML).
• Knowledge of unit/feature testing in PHP.
• Good communication; able to work independently and in a team.
• Experience with Redis or RabbitMQ is advantageous.
• Exposure to Docker and CI/CD pipelines is advantageous.
• Familiarity with Vue.js or React is advantageous.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable backend services and RESTful APIs using PHP frameworks.
• Collaborate with frontend teams to ensure seamless integrations across the stack.
• Write clean, maintainable, well-tested code following best practices.
• Design and optimise MySQL databases including migrations and performance tuning.
• Troubleshoot and resolve issues across environments; participate in code reviews.
• Integrate third-party APIs and external data services; support deployments with DevOps.
• Identify bottlenecks and implement scalable, efficient solutions; contribute to continuous improvement.

Skills

Advanced PHP development

SQL & DB optimisation

RESTful API development

Software design principles

Caching & async processing

DevOps practices

Debugging & performance

Strong communication

Team collaboration

Education

Tertiary qualification in CS/IT

PHP/software certifications (adv)

Tools

Laravel

Git

Redis

RabbitMQ

Docker

CI/CD pipelines

Vue.js/React familiarity

Job description

ATS Client is seeking a Mid-Level Backend PHP Developer to join the engineering team. The role focuses on building scalable backend services, RESTful APIs, and clean code in a collaborative, fast-paced environment.

The successful candidate will work across the full development lifecycle, interact with frontend teams and QA, and contribute to performance tuning, testing, and CI/CD processes. Remote-friendly within South Africa with stable connectivity expectations.