Senior PHP Developer

Job Role: Senior PHP Developer

Reference: BH-353p

Job Type: Permanent

Location: Fully Remote, UK residents

Salary: up to £70,000 per annum

About The Client:

Our client is a cybersecurity company helping organisations protect sensitive information through large-scale data collection, correlation, and real-time alerting. Their platform supports enterprise and government clients operating in high-trust environments.

Overview:

Our client is building a cloud-native cybersecurity platform for large-scale data collection, correlation, and real-time alerting. Their systems process high volumes of data to deliver actionable intelligence for enterprise and government clients.

They are looking for a Senior Software Engineer (PHP) to join a small, highly technical backend team working on performance-critical, data-driven services in a security-focused environment.

Key Responsibilities:

• Take ownership of requirements discovery, scope definition, and delivery planning for key projects and initiatives.
• Work closely with Product Owners and business stakeholders to take ideas from concept through to clearly defined user stories, technical approaches, and delivery estimates.
• Contribute to and help shape roadmaps and delivery plans, balancing business priorities, technical constraints, and engineering effort.
• Design, develop, and maintain backend services and REST APIs using PHP (Laravel v10).
• Own and evolve Elasticsearch implementations, including index design, mappings, query optimisation, aggregations, and performance tuning.
• Design and optimise MySQL schemas and queries for high-volume workloads, including indexing strategies and query performance analysis.
• Build and maintain data ingestion and processing pipelines from multiple internal and external sources.
• Design microservices and distributed systems supporting search, analytics, and alerting use cases.
• Deploy, monitor, and scale services using Docker, CI/CD pipelines, and AWS.
• Ensure secure coding practices and compliance with data protection and security requirements.
• Implement automated testing and maintain high standards of code quality and reliability.
• Write clear technical documentation covering APIs, data models, and system behaviour.
• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers and contribute to architectural decision-making.

Tech Stack and Tools:

• Primary Backend: PHP (Laravel) – core application and API development
• Supporting Services: Java and Golang (smaller services and components), Python where appropriate
• Data Stores: MySQL, Elasticsearch, Redis
• Cloud & DevOps: AWS, Docker, CI/CD pipelines
• Messaging & Streaming: Kafka (or similar)
• Monitoring & Logging: Grafana, Sentry, AWS Logs

Requirements/experience:

• 5+ years of backend development experience, with strong PHP and Laravel expertise.
• Deep, hands-on experience with Elasticsearch, including index design, query optimisation, and performance tuning in production.
• Strong MySQL knowledge, including schema design, indexing strategies, and query optimisation.
• Experience building data-heavy or search-driven systems.
• Solid understanding of API design, microservices, and cloud-native architecture.
• Practical experience with Docker, cloud deployments, and CI/CD workflows.
• Strong understanding of secure coding and system hardening practices.
• Experience writing automated tests (unit and functional).
• Strong problem-solving skills and ownership mindset.

Additional/Desirable experience:

• Experience with large-scale data ingestion or cross-referencing platforms.
• Knowledge of cybersecurity, threat intelligence, or data protection domains.
• Hands-on experience with monitoring, observability, and performance profiling.
• Experience integrating analytics, AI, or LLM-powered features.
• Working knowledge of Python or Java.

Benefits:

• Fully remote and flexible working
• Supportive, collaborative engineering culture
• Opportunity to work on data-intensive, mission-critical systems
• Exposure to modern backend, cloud, and search technologies
• Clear opportunities for technical growth and mentorship