Sr. PHP Symfony Engineer; Remote AR

Position: Sr. PHP Symfony Engineer (Remote, Full-Time) [AR024]
About Smart Working

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Our mission is simple: to break down geographic barriers and connect skilled professionals with outstanding global teams and products for full-time, long-term roles. We help you discover meaningful work with teams that invest in your success, where you're empowered to grow personally and professionally.

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Applicants must have the right to work in the country they are applying from and be able to work without employer sponsorship.

About the Role

As a Senior PHP/Symfony Engineer, you will take hands-on ownership of backend development within a mature Symfony platform that manages marketing and revenue data for enterprise customers. The core application currently runs on Symfony 6.1, with an upgrade to Symfony 7 planned, alongside an Angular front end and Type Script and Python AI agent microservices.

This is a strongly backend-weighted, senior hands-on engineering role requiring an architect mindset, strong independence and the ability to understand how technical decisions affect the wider system. You will work within a remote, cross-functional product squad alongside engineering, product, QA and Dev Ops colleagues.

Responsibilities

• - Take ownership of backend development within the core Symfony application, becoming fully independent in delivering work within 2–3 months of joining.
• - Review and critically assess code written by the team and AI tools, challenging proposed approaches and making sure key considerations have been properly addressed.
• - Support the migration from Symfony 6.1 to Symfony 7 by resolving versioning, compatibility and legacy issues currently preventing the upgrade.
• - Improve the application’s performance, scalability and maintainability, making it easier and safer to introduce new functionality.
• - Work across the Angular front end, Type Script and Python-based AI agent services, collaborating with Dev Ops where backend changes impact other areas of the system.
• - Be comfortable reading and understanding the Angular/Type Script codebase, even though the role is primarily backend focused. Strong front-end development experience is not required.
• - Understand the wider impact of technical decisions across Symfony, Angular and AI services, while spotting gaps or issues in both human-written and AI-generated code.
• - Question existing approaches, identify root causes and look for better ways of building things rather than simply completing assigned tickets.
• - Deliver thoughtful, maintainable solutions within a legacy codebase while maintaining a consistent pace of delivery.
• - Work with a high level of autonomy and ownership while collaborating effectively with a remote, cross-functional team.
• - Follow SOC 2, PII and security requirements consistently and without exception.

Requirements

• - 8+ years of commercial software engineering experience, including at least 5 years working with PHP.
• - 7+ years of Expert-level PHP development experience.
• - 3+ years of recent commercial experience with Symfony 6.x/7 at Advanced level. Strong senior-level Laravel experience may be considered where the experience is clearly transferable and the candidate has a good understanding of the differences between Laravel and Symfony.
• - 4+ years of Advanced experience in backend architecture, system design and scalability.
• - 2+ years of Advanced experience using AI…