Senior Backend Developer (PHP)

Open to remote

SuperCity is a cross-platform city-builder with over 30 million players and a 14+ year history, running on 8 platforms.

Every server error can cost our players their time — and us real revenue. That’s why we place a strong emphasis on stability, performance, and reliability.

To help us evolve our backend, maintain a high-load production system, and deliver new engaging features and game mechanics, the SuperCity team is looking for a Senior Backend Developer (PHP).

Position at

Our successful сitybuilder that has worked hard to make its way into the top 10 games on Facebook Top Grossing Games and has made its mark there. The mobile version was launched in 2017.

ABOUT THE GAME

Responsibilities

Backend Development

• Develop and maintain backend services using PHP.
• Work with a high-load production system (~100k DAU).
• Extend and support a monolithic backend architecture, improving stability and scalability.

Architecture & APIs

• Design, implement, and maintain APIs and internal service interactions.
• Work with API contracts based on JSON Schema.
• Use jRPC for internal communication between system components.

Infrastructure & Data

• Work with MongoDB, Redis, AWS, and Centrifugo.
• Optimize data storage, caching strategies, and background processes.
• Ensure system reliability under real production load.

Performance & Monitoring

• Analyze system performance using Grafana and other monitoring tools.
• Identify bottlenecks, degradation points, and inefficiencies.
• Optimize queries, caching layers, and heavy backend flows.

Required Qualifications

• Strong commercial experience with PHP backend development (5+ years).
• Experience in GameDev or other high-load backend systems.
• Solid understanding of OOP and software design principles.
• Hands-on experience with MongoDB and Redis.
• Experience working with AWS.
• Ability to analyze metrics and work with monitoring tools such as Grafana.
• Understanding of API contracts and JSON Schema.
• Experience with jRPC or similar RPC/API approaches.
• Strong understanding of high-load system challenges, including:
  • Caching strategies
  • Concurrency and race conditions
  • Fault tolerance
  • Scalability
  • Bottleneck identification
• Comfortable working with monolithic architectures and evolving them without disruptive rewrites.

Nice to Have

• Experience with real-time systems like Centrifugo.
• Experience supporting live game servers, live-ops, and event-driven logic.
• Experience profiling and optimizing PHP applications.
• Understanding of CI/CD, observability, and production workflows.
• Experience with evolutionary development of legacy systems.

What we offer:

• Work in a stable international company.
• Competitive salary, reviewed every 6 months based on market trends and your performance.
• Flexible work setup: whether you prefer coming to the office, working from home, or a hybrid of the two, the choice is yours.
• Flexible benefits: an annual $1000 to spend on perks, including health insurance, sports, therapy, education and language classes.
• Full pay during sick leaves and personal leaves, in addition to 20 working days of vacation annually.
• Open statistics, including earnings from our games.
• An epic team ready to share their experience and knowledge.

About Playkot All the way from a 2-people start-up to a grown-up company by those who witnessed it.