Senior PHP Developer

About the Role We are looking for an experienced Senior PHP Developer to join our team and take ownership of critical components of a large-scale, high-load platform processing tens of thousands of requests per second and terabytes of data daily. Our core product is a powerful enterprise monolith with a modular architecture. As the business continues to grow, we focus on maintaining exceptional reliability, performance, and scalability while continuously evolving the platform. You will work alongside a team of senior-level engineers, contributing to architectural decisions, optimizing distributed processes, and driving engineering excellence across the organization. What You'll Do Core Platform Development Design, develop, and optimize key modules of a high-performance PHP platform. Ensure reliability, maintainability, and scalability of the codebase. Take technical ownership of critical business domains and services. Architecture & System Design Participate in architectural decision-making for a large enterprise monolith. Design integration patterns with databases and external systems. Improve modularity and maintain clear boundaries between platform components. Data Layer Optimization Design efficient data models and storage strategies. Optimize MySQL queries and ORM performance under heavy production workloads. Work with large datasets and contribute to analytical solutions using ClickHouse. Event-Driven Architecture Design and maintain asynchronous processing solutions using Apache Kafka. Build reliable integrations between internal services and external systems. Observability & Reliability Integrate telemetry into applications using OpenTelemetry-based solutions. Analyze application performance and identify bottlenecks. Troubleshoot and resolve production incidents. Contribute to monitoring, logging, and tracing practices. Engineering Excellence Conduct meaningful code reviews and mentor fellow engineers. Promote high development standards and best practices. Collaborate closely with Product Managers, QA Engineers, DevOps, and other stakeholders. - 5+ years of commercial PHP development experience. - Strong knowledge of PHP 8.x and modern backend development practices. - Deep understanding of OOP, SOLID principles, design patterns, and clean architecture. - Experience building and maintaining large-scale backend systems. Technical Skills Strong experience with Symfony and/or Laravel. Advanced knowledge of MySQL, including: Query optimization Indexing strategies Replication Locking mechanisms High-volume data processing Experience with Redis. Hands-on experience with Apache Kafka. Understanding of observability, logging, and application profiling. Familiarity with Docker and Kubernetes. Experience working in CI/CD environments. Nice to Have Experience with ClickHouse at scale. Experience building analytics or data lake solutions. Experience refactoring large monolithic applications into modular domains. Knowledge of OpenTelemetry and distributed tracing. Soft Skills Strong ownership mindset and accountability. Ability to work independently and make technical decisions. Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills. Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate with senior engineers and cross-functional teams. Tech Stack PHP 8.x Symfony / Laravel MySQL Redis Apache Kafka ClickHouse Docker Kubernetes Prometheus Grafana OpenTelemetry What We Offer Opportunity to work on a high-load platform handling massive volumes of traffic and data. A team composed of senior-level engineers. High level of technical ownership and impact. Remote-first environment with flexibility across Europe. Hybrid and on-site opportunities in Prague, Czech Republic. Long-term collaboration on challenging engineering problems. 20 vacation days and 5 family days yearly Flexible start to the workday Support from a professional corporate coach and psychologist Regular internal and external activities, workshops, trips, and corporate events Access to our internal knowledge base, meetups, and team-building activities Ongoing training in new technologies and continuous professional development support