Senior PHP Backend Developer

Team: 9 people (3 Backend Engineers, 2 Frontend Engineers, 1 QA Engineer, 1 Product Manager, 1 UX Designer, CTO)
About the Company
We are an international proptech company developing a real estate investment platform that enables investors to co-own income-generating properties or finance real estate professionals. The platform serves a growing community of more than 27,000 investors and is focused on building modern, scalable financial technology products.
We're building an AI-first engineering team and are looking for a Senior PHP Backend Developer who enjoys taking ownership of backend development end-to-end. In this role, you'll be responsible for coding, testing, deployment, cloud infrastructure, and leveraging AI tools to maximize engineering productivity.

What You'll Do
Build scalable backend services using Laravel with clean, high-performance code
Write Unit and Feature tests first (Pest / PHPUnit) following TDD principles
Own deployments on Google Cloud Platform (Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, Cloud Build)
Use AI development tools such as Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Codex, and Cursor to improve development speed and quality
Monitor application performance, identify bottlenecks, and continuously improve the architecture

Requirements
5+ years of commercial experience with PHP and Laravel
Strong experience with Test-Driven Development (TDD)
Hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform, including Docker, Artifact Registry, and serverless services
Proven experience using AI-assisted development tools in daily engineering workflows
Strong knowledge of Eloquent ORM, database indexing, and query optimization
Experience building secure applications (OWASP, secure APIs, encryption)
Solid understanding of MySQL/PostgreSQL, REST APIs, and OOP
Must-have experience:
Laravel — 5+ years
Google Cloud Platform — 5+ years
PostgreSQL — 5+ years
Gemini — 2+ years
Google Antigravity (Google AI development tool) — 6+ months

The Bar
We're looking for someone who combines deep Laravel expertise with an AI-first engineering workflow. AI should amplify your productivity, not replace strong software engineering fundamentals.

Nice to Have
Laravel Pulse / Horizon
GitHub Actions
Open-source contributions (PHP or AI developer tooling)

Why Join
Modern AI-first engineering environment
Access to the latest AI development tools and subscriptions
Google Cloud credits
High level of ownership and autonomy over technical decisions
Opportunity to shape architecture and engineering practices in a growing product company