Lead Backend Developer (PHP)
We're looking for a Backend Developer Lead to take technical ownership of the core platform at Ultimate Guitar — the world's largest destination for musicians, with over 14 million monthly active users. This is a hands-on leadership role:…
muse group · На сервисе с: 03.10.26 18:23
We're looking for a Backend Developer Lead to take technical ownership of the core platform at Ultimate Guitar — the world's largest destination for musicians, with over 14 million monthly active users. This is a hands-on leadership role: you'll drive architecture decisions, mentor engineers, and own the technical direction of the platform — while staying close to the code.
We are actively integrating AI automation into relevant areas of the business and expect candidates with mindset focused on improving efficiency and deliver a better user experience.
What is in it for you?
- Real impact at scale. Your work will reach 14M+ musicians every month — across the platform that defines how the world learns and plays guitar.
- Ownership from day one. You'll shape the technical direction of the platform, not just execute tickets. We trust our leads to drive decisions.
- A team that values craft. We allocate dedicated capacity to technical debt, run regular architecture discussions, and take engineering quality seriously — not just velocity.
- Room to grow. Direct path to broader engineering leadership as the company scales, with full support for learning new tools and practices.
- Design and evolve scalable backend architecture and core platform services
- Lead technical initiatives from solution design and estimation through production release
- Develop new functionality, improve existing systems, and reduce technical debt
- Ensure system scalability, reliability, performance, and maintainability
- Optimize databases, APIs, caching layers, and background processing
- Identify and resolve production incidents, bottlenecks, and technical risks
- Participate in architectural decision-making and long-term platform evolution
- Conduct code reviews and maintain engineering quality standards
- Mentor developers, support onboarding, and provide technical leadership within the team
- Collaborate with Product, Analytics, QA, and other engineering teams
Technical
- 5–7+ years of commercial PHP development experience
- Strong knowledge of modern PHP (8.0+) and backend engineering best practices
- Solid hands-on experience with Yii2
- Experience designing scalable backend systems with a strong grasp of software architecture and system design principles
- Strong MySQL experience: schema design, indexing, query optimization, performance tuning
- Experience with high-load production systems and application performance optimization
- Experience designing APIs and service integrations
- Solid Git workflows, code review practices, and CI/CD experience
- Strong debugging, troubleshooting, and root-cause analysis skills
Leadership & Ownership
- Proven experience leading development teams or major technical initiatives
- Ability to independently drive projects from design to production
- Experience working with large legacy codebases and driving incremental modernisation without disrupting business operations
- Strong estimation, planning, prioritisation, and risk management skills
- Experience mentoring engineers and supporting their professional growth
Soft skills
- Strong analytical and problem-solving mindset
- Effective communication and collaboration in cross-functional teams
- High autonomy, accountability, and product ownership
- Product-oriented thinking with a focus on business impact
Nice to have
- Interest in music and willingness to go deep on the product domain
- Experience building large-scale consumer products
- Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, etc.)
Creativity every day: Make inspiring products for musicians, artists and creators – no day is the same.
Impactful work Influence the future of the music industry and change the lives of millions worldwide.
Work set up: We’ll make sure you’re set up for success with the right work equipment, whether that’s company-provided hardware or an equipment allowance.
Growth and development: Receive specialized training, language lessons, conferences and learning materials.
Team well-being: Support for your mental health and wellbeing, including confidential help during life’s tougher moments.
Похожие вакансии PHP
Andersen is hiring a PHP Developer in the EU to build and maintain scalable backend solutions, integrate APIs, and optimize performance on modern web applications.
Andersen is a pre-IPO software development company providing a full cycle of services. For over 19 years, we have been helping enterprises and middle-sized firms worldwide transform their businesses by creating effective digital solutions using innovative technologies.
Our company operates across a global network of 16 development centers and offices, strategically located in North America, Western and Central Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region. With a strong team of over 3,500 highly skilled professionals, we combine deep domain expertise and advanced technical capabilities to consistently deliver exceptional results for our clients.
- Developing and maintaining the backend logic of web applications.
- Integrating external APIs and third-party services.
- Optimizing existing code for performance, scalability, and security.
- Designing database structures and writing efficient SQL queries.
- Participating in system architecture and technology decisions.
- Writing clean, maintainable, and well-documented code.
- Collaborating closely with front-end developers, designers, and analysts.
- Conducting code reviews and contributing to CI/CD automation.
- Commercial experience with PHP 7/82 for 2+ years.
- Strong understanding of OOP, SOLID principles, MVC, and REST API design.
- Hands-on experience with Laravel, Symfony, or other modern PHP frameworks.
- Proficiency in MySQL or PostgreSQL, with the ability to write optimized queries.
- Experience with any CMS and a strong willingness to learn and explore new ones.
- Experience working with Git version control.
- Solid understanding of HTTP, JSON, AJAX, and API integrations.
- Basic knowledge of Docker or other containerization tools.
- Familiarity with Linux environments.
- Ability to read and improve existing codebases.
- Level of English – from Upper-Intermediate and above.
- Level of German – from Intermediate+ and above.
- Experience with WordPress.
- Experience or knowledge of any frontend framework, such as Angular or React.
- Experience with Redis, RabbitMQ, or Elasticsearch.
- Understanding DDD, CQRS, and Clean Architecture principles.
- Experience writing automated tests (PHP Unit, Pest).
- Basic DevOps knowledge or CI/CD setup experience (GitLab CI, Jenkins).
- Familiarity with front-end frameworks (Vue.js, React, Alpine.js).
- Experience in teamwork with leaders in FinTech, Healthcare, Retail, Telecom, and others. Andersen cooperates with such businesses as Samsung, Siemens, Johnson & Johnson, BNP Paribas, Ryanair, Mercedes, TUI, Verivox, Allianz, T-Systems, etc..
- The opportunity to change the project and/or develop expertise in an interesting business domain.
- Job conditions – you can work both fully remotely and from the office or can choose a hybrid variant.
- Guarantee of professional, financial, and career growth! The company has introduced systems of mentoring and adaptation for each new employee.
- The opportunity to earn up to an additional 1,000 USD per month, depending on the level of expertise, which will be included in the annual bonus, by participating in the company's activities.
- Access to the corporate training portal, where the entire knowledge base of the company is collected and which is constantly updated.
- Bright corporate life (parties / pizza days / PlayStation / fruits / coffee / snacks / movies).
- Certification compensation (AWS, PMP, etc).
- Referral program.
- English courses.
- Private health insurance and compensation for sports activities.
Join us!
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