Senior PHP Backend Developer (Laravel, AI-First)

🔸Full-time 🔸Remote 🔸Long-term cooperation 🔸B2B
2 steps to a job offer.

About the Opportunity

They are building an AI-first engineering team focused on creating scalable financial technology products in the Swiss real estate investment market. Their platform enables thousands of investors to co-invest in income-generating real estate and financing opportunities.
The engineering culture is built around Extreme Programming (XP), Test-Driven Development (TDD), short iteration cycles, and AI-assisted software development. They are looking for an experienced backend engineer who doesn't just write code - but knows how to leverage modern AI development tools to deliver exceptional results.

This is a role for someone who enjoys ownership, high engineering standards, and moving fast without compromising quality.

What You'll Do
Design and build scalable backend services using Laravel and PHP.
Develop clean, maintainable, high-performance code capable of handling high concurrency.
Practice Test-Driven Development (TDD) using Pest and PHPUnit.
Own backend architecture from implementation to deployment.
Deploy and maintain applications on Google Cloud Platform (Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, Cloud Build).
Optimize databases, queries, indexing, and API performance.
Monitor production systems, identify bottlenecks, and continuously improve the codebase.
Collaborate closely with frontend developers, QA, Product Manager, UX Designer, and CTO in a small, highly collaborative engineering team.

AI-First Development

AI is a core part of their engineering workflow - not an optional productivity tool.
They are looking for developers who can effectively use modern AI coding assistants such as: OpenAI Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, and similar AI-powered development tools.

The ideal candidate understands:
prompt engineering for software development
building rich context for AI assistants
multi-agent workflows
system prompts
AI-assisted debugging
AI-assisted architecture and code reviews

They value engineers who understand how and why AI generates code, not those who simply ask an AI to generate a feature and copy-paste the output.

Must-Have Skills
5+ years of professional PHP development
Extensive commercial experience with Laravel
Strong understanding of Object-Oriented Programming
Solid experience with REST APIs
PostgreSQL or MySQL
Experience with Google Cloud Platform (Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, Docker, Cloud Build)
Strong understanding of software architecture and clean code principles
Experience with TDD (Pest/PHPUnit)
Excellent English communication skills (B2+ or higher)
Strong collaboration and communication skills

Nice to Have
Laravel Horizon
Laravel Pulse
GitHub Actions
Experience contributing to open-source projects
Experience with Google Antigravity (currently a plus rather than a requirement)

What They're Looking For

Beyond technical skills, they value developers who:
Deliver significantly more than the average engineer by effectively combining deep technical expertise with AI-powered workflows.
Think critically about AI-generated code rather than accepting it blindly.
Build structured prompts, reusable context, and efficient development workflows.
Take ownership and enjoy solving complex engineering problems.
Communicate well and collaborate effectively within a fast-moving team.

Years of experience alone won't impress them - they're much more interested in how you work, how you think, and how effectively you leverage modern engineering tools.

Tech Stack: PHP, Laravel, Angular, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), PostgreSQL, Docker, REST APIs, Pest, PHPUnit, GitHub, AI coding tools (Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, Gemini, Copilot)

Engineering Culture

The team consists of 9 people: CTO, 3 Backend Developers, 2 Frontend Developers, QA Engineer, Product Manager, UX Designer

They follow Extreme Programming (XP) practices rather than traditional Scrum. Expect:
TDD-first development
One-week development iterations
High engineering standards
Rapid feedback loops
Linear instead of Jira
Continuous improvement over process overhead

Why Join?

Work on a modern AI-first engineering team.
Influence architecture and technical decisions from day one.
Access to the latest AI development tools and subscriptions.
Google Cloud infrastructure and modern engineering practices.
Small team with direct access to decision-makers.
Opportunity to build products used by a growing community of more than 27,000 investors.

Ready to Build the Future of AI-Assisted Software Development?

If you're an experienced Laravel engineer who combines strong backend expertise with a thoughtful, AI-powered development workflow, we'd love to hear from you.

Apply today and show us not just what you've built - but how you build it.