Senior PHP Software Engineer

We are looking for a Senior PHP Software Engineer to strengthen platform governance by improving performance, scalability, and fair resource usage across distributed services. You will design and deliver resilient search and indexing solutions, improve observability, and support on-call operations—apply to help keep the platform reliable at scale.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical design and implementation of a more resilient indexing pipeline
• Build scalable PHP components for search and related services
• Enforce platform limits to protect stability and ensure fair resource usage
• Own complex data synchronization and system load challenges end to end
• Define best practices for Elasticsearch mappings, queries, and monitoring
• Improve observability to detect bottlenecks and prevent regressions
• Provide technical guidance and recommendations to help raise team standards
• Optimize SQL queries, indexes, and schemas to improve performance
• Coordinate with stakeholders to align on reliability and scalability goals
• Support and participate in the team on-call rotation
• Investigate production issues and drive root-cause fixes
• Document decisions, runbooks, and operational playbooks to improve maintainability

Requirements

• 3+ years of software development experience
• Extensive PHP experience in backend systems
• Hands-on experience with a strongly typed backend language (Go, Java, or Scala)
• Proven leadership in designing and delivering resilient systems
• Strong project ownership skills for complex performance and scalability work
• Advanced SQL performance skills with queries, indexes, and schemas
• Solid Elasticsearch skills in query optimization and index management
• Practical distributed messaging experience with RabbitMQ or Kafka
• Strong communication skills with technical and non-technical stakeholders
• High initiative and problem-solving mindset
• Growth mindset and ability to adapt to evolving challenges
• Availability to work until 9 PM CET for EU-based schedules
• English level B2 (Upper-Intermediate)

Nice to have

• Go language experience in high-throughput backend services
• Java experience in distributed systems
• Scala experience with resilient event-driven services
• Load testing experience with k6
• Performance testing experience with JMeter or BlazeMeter

We offer

• International projects with top brands
• Work with global teams of highly skilled, diverse peers
• Healthcare benefits
• Employee financial programs
• Paid time off and sick leave
• Upskilling, reskilling and certification courses
• Unlimited access to the LinkedIn Learning library and 22,000+ courses
• Global career opportunities
• Volunteer and community involvement opportunities
• EPAM Employee Groups
• Award-winning culture recognized by Glassdoor, Newsweek and LinkedIn

EPAM is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.