Backend Software Engineer (PHP)

Punto Pago is a profitable, engineering-led Panamanian fintech that evolved from the country’s largest payments terminal network into a digital ecosystem spanning three verticals: Payments, Fintech, and Marketplace.

Our culture: small senior squads, true ownership and accountability, a bias for shipping resilient systems fast, and a focus on measurable user value over hype.

We’re hiring a Backend Software Engineer (PHP) to own core backend flows end-to-end and deliver measurable impact for hundreds of thousands of users.

What you’ll be doing:

• Build and evolve our core backend systems for payments and fintech: payment processing, CRM business logic, loan origination pipeline, kiosk/terminal backend, operator integrations, and data exports.
• Develop front- and middle-office web apps for CRM and reporting.
• Design solutions end-to-end from data models, API contracts, to resilient, secure architectures.
• Collaborate closely with Business and Mobile development teams to ship features from idea to production.
• Ensure production stability by triaging incidents, fixing bugs quickly, preventing regressions, and monitoring KPIs with actionable alerts.
• Optimize performance under load: SQL tuning, PHP/Node.js profiling, and effective caching.
• Configure monitoring and alerting for key stability and performance metrics.
• Participate in code reviews and architecture discussions, ensuring clean code, secure development, and fintech-grade data protection.
• Work side-by-side with the platform’s original author; expect direct, high-bar feedback and data-driven decisions.

What you’ll need:

• 5+ years of commercial PHP development (8.0+ preferred).
• Strong MySQL: transactions, indexing, query plans, locking/concurrency.
• Practical web stack - JavaScript/jQuery, HTML/CSS, Smarty (or similar templating).
• Composer, package/dependency management, structured project setup.
• Caching & sessions with Memcached (invalidation strategies, TTL, hit-ratio awareness).
• Comfort with Linux/Unix operations and Git/GitLab workflows.
• Proven end-to-end ownership - from design to release and production monitoring.
• Commitment to clean, secure, maintainable code with proper testing.
• Ownership mindset, adaptability, proactive communication, a collaborative approach, comfortable with candid feedback and evolving mature systems.
• English proficiency for professional communication.

Nice to have

• Working knowledge of Node.js for utilities/scripts and small services
• Practical MongoDB experience.
• Experience with C# / WPF.
• Secure development for fintech.
• DS/ML model integration in production.
• Performance and memory tuning skills.
• Experience with unit/integration/API testing and automation.
• Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines.
• Background in financial services.
• Spanish or Russian language skills.

What we offer:

• Competitive salary + annual bonus (discussed post-interview).
• Apple equipment (or equivalent) provided.
• 28 calendar days of vacation + 6 sick leave days annually.
• Hybrid/office in Panama or fully remote.
• Preferred hours: 8-9am → 5-6pm (Panama Time).

Relocation support to Panama.