Backend/PHP Engineer

Help Us Build The Future of Travel At Airalo, we're making it easier for people to stay connected wherever they travel. As the world's first eSIM store, we help millions of travelers access affordable mobile data in 200+ countries and regions around the world. Today, we're a team of 400+ people across 60+ countries, building a product used by travelers every day. We've grown quickly, but we've worked hard to keep what matters: trust, ownership, and the freedom for people to do great work without unnecessary layers or bureaucracy. We're fully remote by design, genuinely global, and united by a shared mission to make travel simpler for everyone. Your Next Destination Location: Remote, anywhere in Spain or the UK. Contract: Spain: Full-time, permanent contrato indefinido via Deel (our employer of record in Spain) UK: Full-time, permanent Benefits: Learn more about our benefits here in this link - Languages: English is our main working language day to day, so you'll need to be comfortable communicating in it both in meetings and async. Curious what it's actually like to work at Airalo? We've put together a guide for each of the hubs we hire from most, covering our benefits, remote culture, employment setup, and what our team values most: Life at Airalo · España: Life at Airalo · United Kingdom: Are you a passionate backend engineer who thrives on solving complex architectural puzzles in PHP? Join our team as a Backend Engineer where you will lead the evolution of our global platform with more then 30 million users. We value technical mastery and the ability to balance rapid innovation with system stability. While we use Laravel, we highly value the architectural rigor of seasoned Symfony experts ready to pick up Laravel and apply their skills to our ecosystem.

Your main responsibilities are:

• Develop and maintain robust backend services capable of handling high-volume global traffic.
• Implement functional APIs and optimize query performance to ensure a seamless user experience.
• Contribute to our modular architecture, helping us build resilient, service-oriented systems.
• Write clean, maintainable code by applying SOLID principles, OOP best practices, and design patterns.
• Master the art of debugging, identifying and resolving issues across our stack with precision.
• Integrate asynchronous processes using queues and basic event-driven patterns to improve system efficiency.
• Collaborate closely with Senior Engineers and Product teams to turn requirements into high-quality technical solutions.

Does this sound like you:

• 3-5 years of professional backend development experience with a solid command of PHP.
• Proven experience building applications in Laravel or a strong background in Symfony with a desire to transition.
• Strong understanding of OOP, interfaces, and code modularity; you know why "clean code" matters.
• Solid knowledge of SQL, including database indexing, migrations, and basic query optimization.
• AI Proficiency: Ability to effectively use AI tools during technical tasks; we value engineers who know how to prompt, validate, and iterate with AI to build better software faster.
• Familiarity with modern infrastructure, including Docker and basic CI/CD pipeline troubleshooting.
• Experience with testing, specifically writing unit and feature tests to ensure code reliability.
• Fluent English with the ability to communicate technical progress and seek support effectively within a remote team.

Bonus:

• Familiarity with caching mechanisms (Redis/Memcached) and Cloud services (AWS).
• Experience with SaaS or Traveltech solutions.
• Experience with eSIM or GSMA technologies.
• A curiosity for distributed systems and horizontal scaling.