Principal Software Engineer (PHP)

Job Role: Principal Software Engineer (PHP)

Reference: BH-345p

Working Hours: 5 days per week

Job Type: Permanent

Permanent Salary: up to £120,000 per annum

Location: Fully Remote (UK)

About the Company:

Our client is a fast-growing fintech company, focused on reshaping consumer finance by utilising innovative technologies. They make financial services more accessible, efficient, and user-friendly. With significant growth in recent years, the company offers an exciting opportunity to work on impactful projects in a collaborative and ambitious team setting. Their engineering team, comprising over 120+ talented engineers, is passionate about building scalable solutions using modern technologies.

Responsibilities:

• Design and implement complex features that improve customer experience and system efficiency.
• Own full systems, taking responsibility for their evolution and performance.
• Identify and resolve technical issues as close to the source as possible for maximum impact.
• Engage in deep architectural discussions and contribute to the company’s technical strategy.
• Initiate projects, including bootstrapping the first implementation.
• Proactively identify gaps in existing systems/processes and propose solutions.
• Foster a high-performing team environment, working with diverse individuals.
• Provide technical leadership across teams, ensuring cross-team dependencies are well understood.
• Drive process improvements, aligning with company strategy and goals.
• Make data-driven decisions, prioritizing effectively—even in first-time situations.
• Mentor and support junior engineers, sharing knowledge and best practices.
• Take on some people management tasks, if required.
• Contribute to the company’s quarterly strategy, influencing technical direction.

Essential Experience:

• Strong, modern PHP development experience (PHP 8.0+ is a must).
• Expertise in Symfony or Laravel.
• Experience designing and building APIs and working with microservices.
• Strong automated testing skills (unit, integration, functional).
• Ability to make strategic technical decisions that align with business objectives.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to think critically about system improvements.
• Experience working in a highly collaborative, cross-functional team.
• Good emotional intelligence, with the ability to mentor and work with diverse individuals.
• Ability to set short-term roadmaps while considering long-term product evolution.

Desirable Experience:

• Experience with Domain-Driven Design (DDD), Message-Driven Systems, and Event Sourcing.
• Knowledge of containerization and orchestration tools such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Familiarity with cloud services, particularly AWS.
• Understanding of buy vs build trade-offs and architectural migration strategies.
• Prior involvement in OKR-driven environments.
• Experience working on high-scale, distributed systems.

Company’s Tech stack:

• Backend: PHP 8, Symfony, MySQL, RabbitMQ, Kafka
• Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes, Docker
• CI/CD & Testing: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Behat, PHPUnit, Jest, Selenium

Benefits:

• Competitive salary with performance-based incentives.
• A flexible working environment, including remote options.
• The opportunity to work on high-impact projects with a talented, supportive team.
• Ongoing professional development and access to cutting-edge technology.