The company is a leading Digital-out-of-Home provider in Germany. It operates a growing network of digital screens at high-frequency retail locations and develops its own technology platform for campaign management, screen operations, monitoring and advertising delivery.
The internal platform supports business-critical processes across campaign management, inventory handling, screen operations, monitoring, advertising delivery and operational workflows. The technology landscape includes long-lived PHP-based applications with significant business logic and operational relevance.
Key responsibilities
Technical responsibilities
- Develop new features for existing PHP-based business applications
- Maintain and improve legacy PHP codebases
- Refactor existing components without disrupting production workflows
- Support stabilization and modernization of business-critical applications
- Build and improve APIs and system integrations
- Work with MySQL / relational databases
- Support performance, stability, maintainability and code quality improvements
- Understand and document complex business logic in existing systems
- Work directly in Jira, Git and established development processes
- Collaborate closely with internal developers and technical leadership in Germany
- Document relevant technical changes, architectural decisions and implementation details
Team lead responsibilities
- Act as the first technical lead for the nearshore development setup
- Support the selection, interviewing and onboarding of further nearshore developers
- Help evaluate technical skills, seniority, communication style and team fit of future candidates
- Serve as the main technical contact for nearshore developers
- Structure and coordinate development work within the nearshore team
- Translate technical requirements and business priorities into clear development tasks
- Support sprint planning, task refinement, estimation and delivery tracking
- Establish practical development standards, coding guidelines and review practices
- Conduct or support code reviews and ensure consistent quality standards
- Identify risks, blockers, dependencies and technical debt early and communicate them clearly
- Help build a reliable, pragmatic and productive nearshore development culture
Required experience
- Strong senior-level PHP development experience
- Experience with legacy PHP applications and long-lived codebases
- Strong MySQL / relational database experience
- Experience with API development and system integrations
- Experience working on business-critical internal applications
- Ability to work in existing codebases, not only greenfield projects
- Experience with refactoring, stabilisation, and incremental modernisation
- Previous experience as a Team Lead, Tech Lead, Lead Developer or senior developer guiding other engineers (at least 2 years)
- Experience in mentoring developers and supporting technical decision-making
- Ability to structure development work and create clarity in complex environments
- Experience with Jira, Git and common development workflows
- Good English communication skills
- Ability to work independently in a remote setup
- Willingness and ability to travel to Cologne, Germany for an initial onboarding phase
Nice to have
- Experience with ad tech, media tech, digital signage, campaign management or inventory systems
- Experience with reporting, monitoring or operational business tools
- Experience with test automation
- Experience with refactoring monolithic systems
- Experience with cloud or hybrid infrastructure
- Experience setting up or scaling distributed / nearshore development teams
- Experience working with German or DACH-based companies
- Experience in defining coding standards, review processes and delivery routines
- Experience with platform modernization while maintaining existing production systems
Important profile characteristics
- Senior enough to understand complex existing systems and grown business logic
- Strong hands-on PHP developer, not only a people manager
- Comfortable with imperfect documentation and historically grown systems
- Able to quickly understand business processes, not only technical requirements
- Pragmatic, reliable and quality-oriented
- Structured in communication, documentation and task breakdown
- Able to lead by example and create trust with internal and external developers
- Strong at identifying technical risks, dependencies and trade-offs
- Able to communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Comfortable acting as a bridge between the internal team in Germany and nearshore developers
- Patient and persistent when working through legacy code, operational constraints and unclear requirements
Working conditions:
- Remote work;
- 5-day working week, 8-hour working day;
- All public holidays are days off;
- Vacation and sick leave are covered by the company;
- English language lessons with regular practice sessions led by a native speaker;
- Cooperation under an FOP / B2B contract.
Working model: Remote nearshore, with initial intensive onboarding in Cologne, Germany
Onboarding: Several weeks on-site in Cologne to understand the company’s systems, processes, team and business context
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