Senior Backend Developer (PHP / Laravel)

E Technologies, a forward-thinking technology and media company, is seeking a skilled Senior Backend Developer with expertise in PHP and Laravel to join our innovative team. The successful candidate will be responsible for designing, developing, maintaining, and optimizing secure, scalable, and high-performance backend applications, APIs, and services across various company products. This role demands strong technical knowledge, exceptional problem-solving abilities, and the capability to independently deliver complex backend solutions while upholding high standards of code quality, security, and maintainability.

Key Responsibilities
- Design, develop, maintain, and optimize backend applications and APIs using PHP 8+ and Laravel.
- Own backend development processes, including technical planning, architecture, implementation, testing, and deployment.
- Architect secure, scalable, and maintainable backend systems.
- Develop and maintain RESTful APIs for web, mobile, and third-party integrations.
- Implement complex features such as authentication, authorization, user management, business workflows, and administrative systems.
- Design and optimize MySQL databases, including relationships, indexing, complex queries, and transactions.
- Utilize Laravel Eloquent ORM, Query Builder, migrations, and database transactions effectively.
- Implement Laravel queues, jobs, events, listeners, notifications, scheduled tasks, and background processing.
- Develop caching strategies using Redis and Laravel Cache.
- Apply secure authentication and authorization mechanisms with Laravel Sanctum, policies, gates, and role-based access control.
- Integrate third-party APIs, payment gateways, authentication providers, email services, and external platforms.
- Manage secure file uploads and storage with AWS S3 or compatible services.
- Ensure robust validation, exception handling, logging, and error reporting.
- Apply security best practices to prevent common vulnerabilities like SQL injection, XSS, and CSRF.
- Optimize application performance, including query tuning and memory management.
- Identify and resolve backend performance bottlenecks such as slow queries and N+1 problems.
- Develop and maintain Laravel Filament administration panels when required.
- Build reliable scheduled processes and asynchronous workflows across systems.
- Write clean, maintainable, reusable code adhering to SOLID principles and modern development standards.
- Create and maintain automated tests for backend functionality and APIs.
- Investigate and resolve production issues and defects.
- Conduct code reviews and contribute to improving coding standards and architecture.
- Collaborate closely with frontend developers, mobile developers, QA engineers, and product teams.
- Participate in technical planning, architecture decisions, task estimation, and solution design.
- Support deployments, database migrations, releases, and ongoing production maintenance.
- Mentor junior developers and enhance backend development processes.

Required Qualifications
- Minimum 5 years of professional backend development experience with strong hands-on PHP and Laravel expertise.
- Proven experience developing and maintaining production-level Laravel applications.
- Advanced knowledge of PHP 8+, OOP, interfaces, traits, namespaces, and modern PHP practices.
- Deep understanding of Laravel architecture, including service containers, dependency injection, service providers, middleware, and application lifecycle.
- Extensive experience with Laravel Eloquent ORM, Query Builder, migrations, relationships, and transactions.
- Strong skills in designing and developing RESTful APIs with excellent understanding of HTTP methods, status codes, JSON, validation, authentication, and error handling.
- Advanced MySQL knowledge covering database design, query optimization, complex SQL, transactions, and data integrity.
- Experience implementing authentication, authorization, permissions, and role-based access control using Laravel Sanctum, policies, and gates.
- Proficiency with Laravel queues, jobs, events, listeners, scheduled tasks, and background processing.
- Experience using Redis for caching and performance optimization.
- Solid grasp of SOLID principles, design patterns, clean architecture, and maintainable code structures.
- Experience integrating third-party APIs, payment gateways, and external services.
- Strong understanding of web application security, OWASP principles, and secure API development.
- Skilled in exception handling, logging, monitoring, and debugging.
- Proficient with Git, branching strategies, pull requests, and collaborative workflows.
- Experience writing automated tests using PHPUnit, Pest, or similar frameworks.
- Familiarity with Composer, dependency management, and Laravel package integration.
- Good knowledge of Linux, Apache/Nginx, PHP-FPM, and backend deployment processes.
- Experience managing background processes with Supervisor, cron jobs, and queue workers.
- Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills with the ability to work independently and deliver high-quality solutions.
- Professional English communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications and Benefits
- Experience with Laravel 11, 12, or newer versions.
- Familiarity with Laravel Filament, including custom resources, forms, tables, actions, and dashboards.
- Background in developing multi-tenant SaaS applications, admin platforms, or complex business systems.
- Knowledge of microservices, modular architectures, and service-oriented applications.
- Experience with Laravel Horizon, Redis queues, and advanced background processing.
- Exposure to WebSockets, Laravel Reverb, and real-time applications.
- Integration experience with Stripe, PayPal, GoCardless, subscription billing, or marketplace payment systems.
- Familiarity with AWS S3, Cloudflare R2, or other cloud storage services.
- Experience with Docker, CI/CD pipelines, and GitHub Actions.
- Knowledge of managing applications on Ubuntu, AlmaLinux, cPanel/WHM, or cloud VPS environments.
- Experience with hosting providers such as AWS, Hetzner, or DigitalOcean.
- Understanding of Nginx, Apache, PHP-FPM tuning, caching, and server optimization.
- Experience with API versioning, rate limiting, Swagger/OpenAPI, and API documentation.
- Familiarity with webhooks, asynchronous processing, and reliable external integrations.
- Knowledge of database replication, backup strategies, and high-availability systems.
- Experience with frontend/backend integration using Vue.js, Nuxt.js, or JavaScript.
- Experience with Firebase, Mailgun, push notifications, or messaging services.
- Background in systems handling high traffic, large datasets, or intensive background processing.
- Experience in media, streaming, publishing, charity, e-commerce, subscription, or membership platforms.
- Proven ability to mentor developers, review code, and improve backend development standards.

Important Application Requirement
Candidates must include at least two complete backend applications, API platforms, or Laravel-based systems they have personally developed or significantly contributed to in their CV or portfolio. For each project, provide the application name, a brief description, live URL or repository link (if available), technologies used (especially PHP and Laravel), individual role and technical contributions, and a summary of backend architecture or complex functionality implemented. Confidential projects may be described without sharing proprietary code, but must clearly outline technical involvement. Applications without two qualifying backend project examples will not be considered.