Senior Back-End Developer (Full Remote)

The Mentor Goal Project

Mentor Goal's mission is to enhance the employability of young people from all backgrounds. We partner with vocational training institutions, assisting them in guiding their students toward apprenticeships, internships, or their first jobs.

The Mentor Goal Employment Platform is a SaaS digital solution that enables:

• Students: To find internships, apprenticeships, or first jobs with support from their schools.
• Schools: To manage job searches and cultivate partnerships with companies.

The Position

We are seeking an experienced Backend Developer for a pivotal role as the technical and quality lead for our product team's backend. You will join a small development team, taking ownership of the backend architecture, code quality, and the reliability of our API in production.

This is not a typical senior backend position; your impact will be measured by the robustness and maintainability of all team deployments, not solely your individual features. This role is focused on quality leadership and backend architecture.

What You Will Do

• Backend Development: Build a clean, high-performance Symfony 6 / PHP 8 API (API Platform, Doctrine) using Clean Architecture principles (use cases, gateways, providers/processors), with a strong emphasis on detail and maintainability.
• Backend Quality Leadership: Define and uphold team standards, including Clean Architecture, SOLID principles, design patterns, TDD, testing strategy, static analysis, and code coverage. You will ensure the quality of all production releases.
• Backend Architecture: Establish transversal foundations (application layers, use cases, gateways, security, infrastructure design patterns) and lead strategic refactorings of legacy code (Mikado, Strangler Fig).
• Data & Performance: Master Doctrine, database migrations, and transactional guarantees (MySQL InnoDB, ACID properties). Track N+1 issues, optimize queries, and ensure data model consistency for our analytics dashboards.
• Security & Reliability: Manage multi-provider authentication (JWT, OAuth2), authorizations (voters, policies), and ensure the robustness of critical flows (transactions, idempotence, error management).
• Reviews & Mentoring: Serve as the final gatekeeper for team code before production. Provide pedagogical reviews that foster the growth of junior developers.
• AI Tooling: Maintain and evolve our development harness based on Claude Code (agents, skills, hooks, MCP). We view AI as a true production partner, not a mere gadget.
• Front-end Involvement: Engage with React / TypeScript when specific tasks require it (e.g., API contracts, small features). While front-end expertise isn't required, comfort in diving into it is essential.

Technical Stack

Backend (Core Focus)

• Symfony 6.4, PHP 8.2+, API Platform 4, Doctrine ORM
• Clean Architecture (Module > Feature > Layer), SOLID principles, design patterns
• Multi-provider authentication (JWT Lexik, OAuth2, MSAL / Okta / SAML)

Quality / CI

• PHPUnit, Foundry, PHPStan (max level + custom rules), PHP CodeSniffer
• GitLab CI, pre-commit / pre-push gates, code coverage

AI Tooling

• Claude Code harness (agents, skills, hooks, MCP)

Data & Monitoring

• MySQL (InnoDB engine, ACID transactions), Doctrine migrations
• Analytics contract (Metabase), Algolia, Sentry, SendGrid, S3 (OVH / AWS)

Front-end (Secondary)

• React 19, strict TypeScript, Redux Toolkit, TanStack Query

Mobile

• Capacitor (iOS / Android)

Profile Sought

• 6 years of backend development experience (PHP / Symfony), including at least 3 years maintaining legacy code, an API in production, and a backend CI pipeline.
• Demonstrated experience where quality was an explicit focus.
• Mastery of Symfony, modern PHP (strict typing), API Platform, and Doctrine (mapping, migrations, performance, N+1 issues), along with MySQL / InnoDB (transactions, ACID properties).
• Proficiency in Clean Architecture, SOLID principles, and design patterns applied to backend development: ability to define layers (entities, use cases, gateways, providers / processors) and defend architectural decisions.
• Experience with TDD as a design tool, static analysis (PHPStan), and large-scale refactorings on legacy code (Mikado, Strangler Fig).
• Strong understanding of application security: authentication / authorization, token management, and data isolation per tenant.
• Ability to challenge requirements: identify vague scopes or poorly formulated needs and communicate them proactively before coding.
• A collaborative mindset: enjoys documenting, simplifying complex concepts, and knowledge transfer. Avoids technical silos.
• Daily use of AI: leveraging AI tools for development (agents, skills, MCP: Claude Code, Cursor, Aider…), Spec-Driven Development, event-driven architecture / asynchronous messaging (Messenger), backend performance auditing (profiling, query optimization, cache), and exposing analytics data.

Mentor Goal Daily Life

Our values define our work culture:

• Proactivity: Your ideas are valued, and everyone contributes.
• Responsibility: Each individual is accountable for their projects and results, fostering rapid autonomy.
• Ambition: We are committed to continuous learning and are not afraid to innovate.
• Impact: Our work is meaningful, directly contributing to youth employability.
• Cooperation: We work collaboratively, ensuring no one is left behind.

Benefits of Working at Mentor Goal

• Full Remote: Work from anywhere in France.
• 39 hours/week, no more.
• Friendly atmosphere, with an online games slot on Wednesday afternoons.
• Team seminar twice a year.

Recruitment Process

1. First Call: Discussion about your background and motivations.
2. Technical Interview: Conversation on front-end architecture, quality, and tooling with the CTO / technical lead.
3. Practical Exercise: Review of a real merge request + a front-end / architecture exercise.
4. Team Exchange: Video call with the development team to assess collaboration and knowledge transfer.
5. Founder Meeting: Discussion with Mansour, co-founder.

Job Characteristics

• Contract Type: To be determined
• Compensation: According to profile and experience
• Start Date: As soon as possible
• Location: France – 100% remote

To Apply

Please send us a CV, a short cover letter, and a link to a personal achievement (GitHub, personal project, tool you built) – this is a significant advantage.

PS: Our mission is to support individuals in finding employment, so the quality of your application will be particularly appreciated.

Salary: From €30,270.81 per year

Job Location: Remote