Lead PHP Engineer - Data Products

Reward Gateway, part of Edenred, is a global leader in benefits and employee engagement. We help businesses attract, engage, and retain top talent through strategic reward, recognition, and well-being solutions. Guided by our shared missions - ‘Making the World a Better Place to Work’ and ‘Enriching Connections, For Good’ - we’re committed to transforming workplaces and improving people’s daily lives. Our team embodies entrepreneurial spirit, innovation, and respect. We push boundaries, speak up, and stay human, fostering a culture where imagination thrives. Your Role in our Mission: An opportunity has become available for a Technical Engineering Lead to join the Data Products team within our engineering organisation. The Data Products team is a cross-functional group of backend, frontend and analytics engineers, responsible for building and maintaining the data-driven products and visualisation interfaces that deliver insights to a wide range of users. In this role you will guide engineers through complex technical decisions across a broad range of disciplines, contribute to design reviews, identify areas for improvement, and help create alignment across teams. You will balance long term technical strategy with the realities of short-term delivery, ensuring decisions are both well informed and practical. You will also work in close partnership with the Data Platform team, ensuring that the products your team builds are well aligned with the underlying platform strategy. You will manage team performance, support career development, and help engineers grow in confidence and capability across backend, frontend and analytics domains. You will also work closely with Heads of Engineering and Product teams to support effective planning and ensure reliable, high-quality delivery across the organisation. This is a hybrid role that would require presence in our Sofia or Plovdiv office at least twice per week, as agreed. Key Responsibilities 1. Lead and develop a high-performing engineering team Lead a cross-functional team spanning backend, frontend and analytics engineering disciplines, fostering collaboration across different technical domains Monitor individual and team performance and promote accountability Support hiring, onboarding and continuous development of engineers Drive predictable Agile delivery and support effective planning 2. Shape and contribute to architecture strategy Support the transition toward microservices and event driven patterns Participate in architecture reviews and cross team planning Maintain clear architectural documentation and architectural decision records Work closely with data platform lead to ensure data products and platform strategy is well aligned 3. Ensure high-performance and scalable engineering Define, measure and report on platform performance KPIs Guide teams in designing scalable, resilient backend systems and data pipelines Support performance investigations and platform optimisation efforts 4. Lead API design, governance, and documentation Define and champion consistent API design principles, including data contracts and schema governance where applicable Oversee the governance of API changes, versioning and documentation quality Ensure APIs are discoverable, well-structured and reliable 5. Drive security excellence Establish and maintain a security-first culture across engineering teams Lead threat modelling exercises and coordinate vulnerability remediation 6. Champion quality assurance and testing standards Promote shared ownership of quality, encouraging teams to build robust automated testing Ensure test coverage, test reliability and continuous improvement of testing practices Champion data quality practices including data model testing, schema validation and observability of data products 7. Reduce technical debt and drive system optimisation Lead refactoring and modernisation initiatives Prioritise and track improvements to system health Promote best practices in performance tuning, code quality and maintainability 8. Improve engineering efficiencies through frameworks and tooling Participate in decisions on new frameworks, tooling and engineering approaches Standardise tooling and processes across teams Look for opportunities to improve development workflows and reduce friction 9. Strengthen documentation and reporting standards Define documentation guidelines and ensure they are followed Implement structured incident reporting and post incident review processes Promote clear, accessible documentation as part of engineering culture Skills, Knowledge and Experience Required: Proven experience in a technical leadership role working on large scale, business critical SaaS platforms Proven experience leading cross-functional engineering teams spanning backend, frontend and analytics disciplines, with the depth to engage credibly across all three Strong engineering background spanning backend systems, data modelling and tooling, and frontend development Hands-on experience with PHP, SQL, and at least one other backend language Solid understanding of system architecture, microservices, event driven systems and API design Good knowledge of modern cloud environments, CI/CD practices and observability tools Experience with performance tuning, debugging and scalability challenges Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to build trust across teams Practical leadership style focused on enabling engineers and removing blockers Strong analytical and critical thinking skills A proactive, improvement minded approach to engineering The Interview Process: Online interview with the Talent Partner and Engineering Lead Online technical interview with the Head of Engineering and an Engineering Lead At Reward Gateway | Edenred, we are committed to ensuring an inclusive and accessible recruitment process for all candidates. If you have any specific requirements or need reasonable adjustments at any stage of the recruitment journey, please let your Talent Acquisition Partner know. Your needs are important to us, and we want to ensure an equitable experience for every candidate. Be comfortable. Be you. We want every employee to feel comfortable bringing their passion, creativity and individuality to work. We value all cultures, backgrounds and experiences, because we believe diversity drives innovation and makes us stronger. Our approach to hiring and building teams is about more than filling roles - it’s about creating an environment where everyone can thrive, feel supported, and contribute to our mission of making the world a better place to work!