Senior PHP Backend Developer (Laravel, AI-First)

🔸Full-time 🔸Remote 🔸Long-term cooperation 🔸B2B
2 steps to a job offer.

About the Opportunity

They are building an AI-first engineering team focused on creating scalable financial technology products in the Swiss real estate investment market. Their platform enables thousands of investors to co-invest in income-generating real estate and financing opportunities.

The engineering culture is built around Extreme Programming (XP), Test-Driven Development (TDD), short iteration cycles, and AI-assisted software development. They are looking for an experienced backend engineer who doesn't just write code - but knows how to leverage modern AI development tools to deliver exceptional results.

This is a role for someone who enjoys ownership, high engineering standards, and moving fast without compromising quality.

What You'll Do

• Design and build scalable backend services using Laravel and PHP.
• Develop clean, maintainable, high-performance code capable of handling high concurrency.
• Practice Test-Driven Development (TDD) using Pest and PHPUnit.
• Own backend architecture from implementation to deployment.
• Deploy and maintain applications on Google Cloud Platform (Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, Cloud Build).
• Optimize databases, queries, indexing, and API performance.
• Monitor production systems, identify bottlenecks, and continuously improve the codebase.
• Collaborate closely with frontend developers, QA, Product Manager, UX Designer, and CTO in a small, highly collaborative engineering team.

AI-First Development

AI is a core part of their engineering workflow - not an optional productivity tool.

They are looking for developers who can effectively use modern AI coding assistants such as: OpenAI Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, and similar AI-powered development tools.

The ideal candidate understands:

• prompt engineering for software development
• building rich context for AI assistants
• multi-agent workflows
• system prompts
• AI-assisted debugging
• AI-assisted architecture and code reviews

They value engineers who understand how and why AI generates code, not those who simply ask an AI to generate a feature and copy-paste the output.

Must-Have Skills

• 5+ years of professional PHP development
• Extensive commercial experience with Laravel
• Strong understanding of Object-Oriented Programming
• Solid experience with REST APIs
• PostgreSQL or MySQL
• Experience with Google Cloud Platform (Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, Docker, Cloud Build)
• Strong understanding of software architecture and clean code principles
• Experience with TDD (Pest/PHPUnit)
• Excellent English communication skills (B2+ or higher)
• Strong collaboration and communication skills

Nice to Have

• Laravel Horizon
• Laravel Pulse
• GitHub Actions
• Experience contributing to open-source projects
• Experience with Google Antigravity (currently a plus rather than a requirement)

What They're Looking For

Beyond technical skills, they value developers who:

• Deliver significantly more than the average engineer by effectively combining deep technical expertise with AI-powered workflows.
• Think critically about AI-generated code rather than accepting it blindly.
• Build structured prompts, reusable context, and efficient development workflows.
• Take ownership and enjoy solving complex engineering problems.
• Communicate well and collaborate effectively within a fast-moving team.

Years of experience alone won't impress them - they're much more interested in how you work, how you think, and how effectively you leverage modern engineering tools.

Tech Stack: PHP, Laravel, Angular, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), PostgreSQL, Docker, REST APIs, Pest, PHPUnit, GitHub, AI coding tools (Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, Gemini, Copilot)

Engineering Culture

The team consists of 9 people: CTO, 3 Backend Developers, 2 Frontend Developers, QA Engineer, Product Manager, UX Designer

They follow Extreme Programming (XP) practices rather than traditional Scrum. Expect:

• TDD-first development
• One-week development iterations
• High engineering standards
• Rapid feedback loops
• Linear instead of Jira
• Continuous improvement over process overhead

Why Join?

• Work on a modern AI-first engineering team.
• Influence architecture and technical decisions from day one.
• Access to the latest AI development tools and subscriptions.
• Google Cloud infrastructure and modern engineering practices.
• Small team with direct access to decision-makers.
• Opportunity to build products used by a growing community of more than 27,000 investors.

Ready to Build the Future of AI-Assisted Software Development?

If you're an experienced Laravel engineer who combines strong backend expertise with a thoughtful, AI-powered development workflow, we'd love to hear from you.

• Apply today and show us not just what you've built - but how you build it.