Senior Backend Engineer

Senior Backend Engineer

Sirma Group

Sofia, Bulgaria

We're looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to take a leading role in supporting our development teams and advancing an established platform used for mission-critical financial services. You will shape solution architecture, drive technical design, and build reliable backend services while working with experienced colleagues in a dynamic, continuously evolving environment shaped by changing client needs.

Your responsibilities:

• Take a leading role in the design, development, maintenance, and continuous evolution of backend applications, services, and the existing platform.
• Translate complex business and functional requirements into effective technical designs and production-ready solutions.
• Build with PHP, using Laravel and/or Symfony as part of our backend technology stack.
• Shape backend solution architecture and make sound technical design decisions across services, modules, and interfaces.
• Design and integrate APIs, backend services, enterprise applications, databases, and external systems.
• Help evolve our existing multi-client platform toward more modular, API-driven, AI-enabled, and microservices-based architecture in response to changing client needs.
• Work closely with experienced solution architects, engineers, and product professionals to turn architecture and client requirements into effective implementation.
• Set the bar on engineering standards, design consistency, and continuous improvement through code reviews and technical guidance.
• Write reusable, secure, well-structured components that other engineers can build on.
• Design and optimize data models, queries, and database interactions across MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB.
• Support data integrity, reliability, and efficient processing at scale.
• Participate in the full development lifecycle — from design through deployment, troubleshooting, and support.
• Drive the modernization and continuous development of the existing platform toward more maintainable, scalable, and adaptable architectures.
• Use Git, automated testing, and CI/CD practices as standard parts of how we build.

Role's requirements:

• Strong senior-level backend engineering experience, with real ownership of complex technical solutions.
• Solid understanding of software architecture, design principles, maintainability, scalability, security, and performance.
• Hands-on PHP experience, with practical experience in Laravel and/or Symfony.
• Experience designing, developing, and integrating APIs and distributed backend services.
• Experience with databases including MySQL and PostgreSQL, covering data modeling, query optimization, and performance tuning. Experience with MariaDB and MongoDB is considered an advantage.
• Ability to evaluate technical options, make pragmatic architecture decisions, and guide implementation quality.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to work independently and take ownership.

Advantages:

• Technical leadership, architecture ownership, or experience mentoring other engineers.
• Experience with both Laravel and Symfony, plus unit testing/test-driven development.
• Experience with CMS and digital commerce platforms such as Drupal, Magento, Shopify, and Joomla.
• Enterprise application integration, API architecture, or event-driven/service-oriented design experience.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, containerization, or cloud environments.
• Background in banking, insurance, or other regulated industries.
• Curiosity about AI-assisted development and emerging engineering practices.