Laravel Backend Engineer (PHP)

About the roleWe are looking for a Laravel Engineer to join our development team and help evolve Retriever’s social media product.
You will work alongside other backend engineers, the Product Owner, and the frontend team, developing new features and improving integrations, background processing, analytics, and other parts of the backend.
The product integrates with major social media platforms and processes data through APIs, webhooks, and scheduled jobs, giving you the opportunity to work on a varied set of practical backend challenges.Key ResponsibilitiesFeature Development & MaintenanceResolve existing issues, improve existing code, and develop new backend features together with the team.
Third-Party API IntegrationsMaintain and develop integrations with external APIs, including social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
Background ProcessingWork with Laravel queues and Horizon to process webhooks and scheduled synchronization jobs reliably.
Analytics & Data ProcessingContribute to our analytics functionality, including data aggregation and optimization of MariaDB queries.
Code Quality & TestingWrite maintainable code and unit/integration tests to prevent regressions and keep key services stable.Requirements· Solid professional experience developing and maintaining production applications with PHP 8.2+ and Laravel.· Ability to work independently on backend tasks, from understanding requirements through implementation, testing, and troubleshooting.· Good working knowledge of MariaDB/MySQL, including indexing and query optimization.· Hands-on experience with background processing using Laravel queues and Redis.· Hands-on experience building and maintaining integrations with external REST APIs and webhooks.· Experience writing unit and integration tests with PHPUnit.· Familiarity with Docker for local development.· Good written and spoken English.Nice to Have· Experience with Laravel Horizon.· Experience with social media APIs such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or TikTok.· Experience building reporting or analytics functionality using relational databases.· Experience with WebSockets / Laravel Reverb / Echo.· Basic understanding of Kubernetes.