Senior Backend Developer (PHP/Laravel, Node.js/Java) - High-Volume Platform

At Cactus Gaming, we are seeking a Senior Backend Developer to work on a highly critical platform handling a large volume of transactions and complex integrations with providers for gaming, payments, KYC, and anti-fraud services. You will be responsible for designing, developing, and evolving complex integrations across multiple platforms, ensuring security, high availability, low latency, and scalability throughout the Cactus Gaming ecosystem.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain high-performance, well-structured RESTful APIs.
• Create and maintain robust integrations with external providers (payments, KYC, anti-fraud, game providers, notification gateways, etc.).
• Work with asynchronous events and queues (Redis, Kafka, SQS, or similar) to ensure scalability and resilience.
• Ensure integration security, protecting APIs against attacks (rate limiting, authentication, authorization, validations, etc.).
• Optimize queries and performance for relational databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL databases.
• Utilize caching technologies (Redis and similar) to reduce latency and increase throughput.
• Implement and maintain automated tests (unit, integration, and contract tests where possible).
• Document APIs and integration flows using Swagger / OpenAPI, Postman, or similar tools.
• Collaborate with Frontend, DevOps, and Security teams on complex architectural solutions.
• Help evolve architectural standards, code quality, logging, metrics, and observability practices.

Required Skills & Experience

• Solid experience in backend development using PHP (Laravel) and experience with at least one other modern backend language (Node.js or Java).
• Strong knowledge of the Laravel ecosystem: Eloquent, Events, Jobs, Middlewares, Queues, Multi-tenant.
• Proven experience integrating third-party APIs, including authentication and security protocols: OAuth2, JWT, API Keys, Webhooks, WebSockets.
• Database proficiency:
  • Relational: MySQL, PostgreSQL.
  • Non-relational (NoSQL): Redis, MongoDB, and/or DynamoDB.
• Experience with caching, performance optimization, and monitoring using tools like Sentry, Grafana, Prometheus, ELK/EFK, or similar.
• Strong ability to debug and investigate issues in complex integrations and legacy systems, including log analysis, tracing, and production behavior analysis.
• Practical knowledge of Cloud environments (AWS) and containerization with Docker.
• Experience with Git, code review, and versioning best practices.
• Ability to work autonomously, demonstrate ownership, and maintain good team communication.

Desirable Skills (Differentiators)

• Previous experience in iGaming, sports betting, payment processing, or fintechs.
• Certifications in AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, or Laravel.
• Experience with microservices, Event Sourcing, and CQRS.
• Knowledge of security and compliance standards: PCI-DSS, LGPD, GDPR, OWASP best practices.
• Experience with container orchestration (Kubernetes, Helm) and resilience/disaster recovery strategies.
• Experience with feature flags, A/B testing, and experimentation.

Technical Mindset We Seek

We value candidates who demonstrate:

• Availability and genuine interest in learning new stacks, especially:
  • Kotlin (for modern JVM services).
  • Go (Golang) for high-performance, low-latency services.
• A vision for scalable architecture, understanding trade-offs regarding performance, cost, and maintenance.
• A focus on quality, testing, logging, metrics, and observability from the outset.
• A continuous improvement mindset, proposing and implementing enhancements to processes, architecture, and code.

If you thrive on high technical complexity, critical integrations, and seek growth in an environment that values autonomy, ownership, and constant learning (including new languages like Kotlin and Go), we encourage you to apply.