Senior PHP Engineer - Airalo

About Airalo

At Airalo, we make it easier for people to stay connected wherever they travel. As the world's first eSIM store, we help millions of travelers access mobile data in over 200 countries and regions.

We’re a fully remote team of 400+ people across 60+ countries, building a product used at a global scale every day. Work here is structured but fast-moving, with clear ownership and the space to make decisions without unnecessary layers.

Are you a seasoned engineer who thrives on solving complex architectural puzzles in PHP? Join our team as a Senior Backend Engineer where you will lead the evolution of our global platform serving more than 30 million users. While we use Laravel, we highly value the architectural rigor of seasoned Symfony experts ready to pick up Laravel and apply their skills to our ecosystem.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design of high-performance distributed systems capable of handling global traffic.
• Develop and refine services to improve scalability and efficiency.
• Drive the transition toward a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to ensure modularity and resilience.
• Set the bar for code quality by enforcing SOLID principles, design patterns, and testing standards.
• Actively coach mid-level engineers through deep code reviews and technical knowledge sharing.
• Identify bottlenecks in services and implement advanced caching and database strategies.
• Partner with Product and DevOps to translate complex requirements into scalable technical roadmaps.

Requirements

• 7+ years of professional backend development experience with deep mastery of PHP.
• 4+ years of building enterprise-grade applications in Laravel or an equivalent senior background in Symfony.
• Mastery of distributed systems, event-driven architecture, and messaging patterns like SQS or Pub/Sub.
• AI Proficiency: Ability to effectively use AI tools during technical tasks to prompt, validate, and iterate faster.
• Solid knowledge of SQL and NoSQL databases, including performance tuning and handling transactions at scale.
• Experience architecting on AWS and managing containerized environments with Docker.
• Strong commitment to clean code, automated testing, and CI/CD best practices.
• Fluent English with the ability to articulate complex technical trade-offs across synchronous and asynchronous communication.
• Must reside and be fully eligible to work in the UK.

Nice to Have

• Experience with SaaS/PaaS, SOA, or microservices architecture.
• Experience with eSIM or GSMA technologies.
• Familiarity with Traveltech solutions.
• Experience building or maintaining custom SDKs.

On-Call Rotation

Participating in our on-call rotation is an expectation of this role to maintain 24/7 service reliability:

• Paid Rotation: Standby fees plus overtime pay.
• Delayed Start: No on-call duties for your first 6 months.
• Rest & Recovery: Guaranteed rest periods and flexible hours following night incidents.
• Shared Load: Rotations are split (Weekdays vs. Weekends) to minimize fatigue.