Senior Backend Engineer - PHP/Symfony (Remote, Full-Time), PK

About the role

You will architect and own the backend services that power our production platforms, making strategic technical decisions that directly shape product capabilities and user experience. You will lead the design of scalable, maintainable PHP systems using Symfony, ensuring that architecture choices align with long-term business objectives and engineering best practices. You will collaborate daily with cross-functional teams, translating ambiguous requirements into robust technical solutions while maintaining a high standard of code quality and system reliability. You will mentor junior and mid-level engineers, elevating the entire team through code reviews, technical guidance, and thoughtful contribution to our engineering culture. You will implement automated testing strategies and quality gates that keep our deployments fast, predictable, and safe. You will work within an Agile delivery framework, continuously improving processes and contributing to sprint planning, retrospectives, and refinement sessions. You will partner with product managers and designers to validate ideas early, ensuring that technical constraints are considered before features are built. You will act as a technical advocate, balancing innovation with operational needs to deliver solutions that are both powerful and sustainable.

Key facts

What you'll do

Investigate production issues and performance bottlenecks using monitoring tools and logs to identify root causes and implement resilient fixes.

Design and maintain robust API layers and internal services using Symfony components, ensuring loose coupling and clear separation of concerns.

Refactor legacy codebases to improve readability, reduce technical debt, and increase test coverage without disrupting stable functionality.

Collaborate with frontend and mobile teams to define integration contracts, reducing friction and miscommunication across product teams.

Implement database migrations and schema changes with careful attention to data integrity, performance, and rollback strategies.

Write unit and functional tests that give the team confidence to refactor, ensuring that critical paths remain stable through automated verification.

Optimize application response times and resource usage through profiling, caching strategies, and thoughtful query design.

Document system behavior, architectural decisions, and integration patterns so that new engineers can ramp up quickly and safely.

Support on-call responsibilities by diagnosing incidents, proposing remediation steps, and contributing to post-incident review processes.

Evaluate third-party libraries and services, assessing risks, compatibility, and long-term maintenance before introducing new dependencies.

Contribute to technical roadmaps, helping to prioritize features and infrastructure work based on business impact and engineering effort.

Guide junior developers through pair programming and constructive feedback, fostering a learning environment where knowledge is shared openly.

Ensure that all code follows strict quality standards, including linting, static analysis, and secure coding practices before merging changes.

Promote DevOps-friendly practices by building deployment-friendly artifacts and working closely with operations to streamline release workflows.

Requirements

You must have a minimum of 8 years of professional software development experience, with a strong focus on PHP and related technologies.

You must possess deep, hands-on experience with Symfony, including at least 5 years of proven work shipping applications using the framework.

You must be fluent in object-oriented PHP, understanding design patterns, SOLID principles, and clean coding practices at an advanced level.

You must have a strong grasp of relational databases, SQL optimization, and experience with database abstraction layers and migrations.

You must understand RESTful API design and be able to build endpoints that are consistent, versioned, and well-documented.

You must have experience with testing frameworks and be committed to maintaining high test coverage for critical business logic.

You must be comfortable working in a Git-based workflow, including feature branching, pull requests, and collaborative code review.

You must have a proven track record of mentoring engineers, conducting code reviews, and elevating the technical skills of others.

Practical notes

This role is fully remote and open to candidates based in Pakistan, allowing you to contribute from a location that suits your lifestyle. The position is full-time and requires reliable availability for collaboration within standard working hours, with clear expectations around responsiveness and delivery. There are no travel requirements associated with this position, and no visa sponsorship details are specified at this time. You will join an established engineering team that values autonomy, ownership, and thoughtful decision-making. The selection process will focus on your technical abilities, communication skills, and alignment with our commitment to building sustainable, high-quality software. If you are passionate about clean code, mentoring, and long-term impact, we encourage you to apply and become part of a growing community of professionals who value meaningful work.