Senior PHP Back-end Developer (Symfony)

• Contract
• Back-end

Paybis is a global fintech company operating at the intersection of crypto and traditional payments. Since 2014, we've been building products that help people and businesses buy, sell, and exchange cryptocurrency. We serve 8.6M+ customers across 180+ countries and operate as a self-funded company with ~200 people across Europe, Ukraine, and the US.

We hold a MiCA CASP authorisation and a Payment Institution (PSD2) licence in Latvia — one of a small group of companies in Europe holding both simultaneously — alongside FinCEN MSB and FINTRAC registrations.

We are currently strengthening our backend engineering team to accelerate development of our native mobile application and core backend services. This role is critical for improving delivery speed, scalability, and long-term architecture quality across our platform.

We are looking for a strong Senior PHP Back-end Developer who combines deep PHP/Symfony expertise with architectural thinking, ownership mindset, and passion for building reliable high-load backend systems.

As a Senior PHP Backend Developer (IC-4), you'll work on scalable backend services powering our fintech and crypto products. This is a hands-on engineering role with high ownership and autonomy — you'll contribute to API development, microservices architecture, legacy refactoring, performance optimization, and engineering quality improvements across the platform.

You'll collaborate daily with backend engineers, DevOps, QA, mobile developers, and product teams. The ideal candidate is proactive, technically mature, comfortable with complex systems, and capable of driving backend improvements independently.

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable backend services using PHP 8 and Symfony 6/7
• Build and support secure RESTful APIs and third-party service integrations
• Contribute to microservices architecture development and service decomposition
• Improve backend scalability, reliability, and performance
• Refactor legacy code and systematically reduce technical debt
• Participate in architecture discussions and propose engineering improvements
• Conduct code reviews and raise engineering quality standards across the team
• Troubleshoot production issues and support incident resolution
• Collaborate with QA, DevOps, Product, and Mobile teams
• Support CI/CD processes and production releases
• Mentor junior and middle engineers as you settle in

Must have:

• 5+ years of commercial PHP development
• 2+ years hands-on experience with Symfony 6/7 in production
• Strong understanding of OOP, SOLID principles, and design patterns — applied in practice, not just in theory
• Experience building and maintaining REST APIs in service-oriented or microservices architecture
• Strong knowledge of MySQL/MariaDB: query optimization, Doctrine ORM, migrations
• Experience with RabbitMQ or Kafka in production environments
• Caching experience: Redis, Valkey, or Memcached
• Git proficiency: branching strategy, PR process, active code review participation
• Comfortable working in Docker-based environments
• Strong production debugging and troubleshooting skills
• Awareness of security fundamentals: OWASP Top 10, IDOR, SQL injection prevention
• English B2/C1 — daily written communication: PRs, tickets, async discussions

Soft skills we genuinely care about:

• Ownership Mindset — proactive improvements and end-to-end task ownership are an expectation, not an option

• Engineering-First Thinking — instinctively considers scalability, maintainability, and code quality

• Autonomous Execution — self-organizes, accurately estimates, and delivers without micromanagement

• Adaptability — switches between tasks and changing requirements without loss of quality

• Cross-functional Collaboration — works effectively with QA, DevOps, Product, and Mobile teams daily

• Pragmatic Problem-Solving — makes the right trade-off between speed and quality under pressure

• AWS experience: ECS, Lambda, SQS/SNS, Aurora, S3, API Gateway

• Infrastructure as Code: Terraform or Serverless Framework

• GitLab CI/CD pipeline configuration and maintenance

• NoSQL experience: DynamoDB or MongoDB

• Background in fintech, payments, or crypto

• Experience integrating with PSPs (Checkout.com, Stripe, Adyen, Worldpay, or similar)

• High-load backend systems experience

• Go — existing experience or genuine interest in learning

• Experience mentoring engineers or leading technical initiatives

• Familiarity with LLM/AI-assisted development tools

• Remote-first with high autonomy and minimal micromanagement

• Product company, not outsourcing — you own what you build

• Real scale: 8.6M+ users, 180+ countries, production systems that matter

• Technically challenging domain: fintech and crypto problems that don't have easy answers

• Modern, relevant stack — no legacy-only work

• Clear career path: IC-4 Senior → IC-5 Strong Senior → IC-6 Tech Lead

• A culture that values quality over speed, accountability without blame, and continuous improvement

Stage 1 — Team Leader Interview (1.5h)

Focus:

• PHP/Symfony expertise
• Backend engineering depth
• Ownership and problem-solving

Stage 2 — System Design Interview (1.5h)

Focus:

• Architecture thinking
• APIs and scalability
• Design patterns and engineering decisions

Stage 3 — CIO + Head of HR Interview (1h)

Focus:

• Culture fit
• Communication
• Growth potential
• Team collaboration