Senior PHP Backend Engineer (Remote, Full-Time) [AR025]

About Smart Working

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About the Role

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will take end-to-end ownership of mature, large-scale production backend systems handling significant data volumes, device connectivity, video and location data. This is a full-time, long-term role, with a target start date of November 2026.

You will join a small, highly senior engineering team of around 10 in-house developers, where autonomy and technical judgement are important. The role is 100% backend, working across a platform that combines DVR cameras, event reconstruction, tracking, telematics, fuel and EV data. Customers are largely public sector, making security, GDPR and footage retention important considerations.

You will inherit existing systems with limited documentation, contribute to major modernisation initiatives, and collaborate closely with the developer leading computer vision work.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the PHP backend that ingests GPS and telematics data, safety hardware events and DVR video, and sends real-time alerts.
• Build and maintain APIs used by the web platform, mobile application and integration partners.
• Deliver the ongoing Yii2-to-Laravel migration, with Yii2 at end of life and approximately a year remaining to complete the migration.
• Deliver the ongoing MariaDB-to-PostgreSQL migration.
• Support the decomposition of the existing monolith into microservices.
• Take over systems from a retiring contractor and become productive quickly despite limited documentation.
• Support the backend for the AI product line, working alongside the developer currently leading computer vision work; the exact scope is still to be confirmed.
• Take end-to-end ownership of production systems rather than requiring prior people-management or project-lead experience.
• Work independently within a small senior team while collaborating closely on AI-related work.
• Apply architectural judgement to microservices and database migrations, with particular attention to data integrity during migration.
• Work flexibly within established practices, including Bitbucket Pipelines and PHPUnit, in a small team with light process.
• Contribute as a problem-solver, applying senior technical judgement to production engineering decisions.
• Work thoroughly on production systems used by local authorities while ramping up quickly for the required start date.

Requirements

• 8+ years of commercial PHP backend development at Expert level.
• 5+ years of experience with large-scale SaaS or complex production systems at Expert level; simple or low-traffic systems will not meet the required standard.
• 3+ years of PostgreSQL experience at Advanced level.
• 5+ years of API design and third-party integration experience at Advanced level.
• 3+ years of high-volume data processing experience at Advanced level, including event-driven systems and ingestion pipelines; IoT or device data ingestion, streaming or queue-based systems are acceptable substitutes.
• 3+ years of Laravel and/or Yii2 experience at Advanced level.
• 3+ years of PHPUnit experience at Advanced level; other PHP testing frameworks such as Pest or Codeception may substitute.
• 2+ years of microservices or monolith-decomposition experience at Intermediate level; service-oriented or modular architecture work may substitute.
• 2+ years of AWS experience at Intermediate level; Azure or GCP may substitute.
• Experience in the telematics, fleet or logistics domain at Intermediate level; IoT, GPS/location technology or connected-device experience may substitute.
• Experience with video, CCTV or large media file handling at Intermediate level; large-file storage, retrieval and retention at scale may substitute.
• Ability to take end-to-end ownership of mature production systems, work independently with limited hand-holding and apply strong technical judgement.
• Strong complex-system exposure is essential. Experience with complex systems matters more than years alone, and backgrounds limited to simple or basic applications are not suitable.

Nice to Have

• Experience with MariaDB/MySQL at scale, particularly relevant to an environment currently migrating from MariaDB to PostgreSQL.
• Front-end experience, although this is not required for this 100% backend role.
• Familiarity with CI/CD using Bitbucket Pipelines; GitHub Actions, GitLab CI or Jenkins are suitable alternatives.
• Familiarity with AI or computer vision, including YOLO-type object detection; ML or image-processing pipeline exposure may substitute.
• Experience combining event-driven or IoT-style data ingestion with large media files at scale, ideally alongside an ML pipeline.
• AI experience is a tiebreaker only and candidates should not be excluded for lacking it.