Senior PHP/Laravel Engineer

Location: Remote – Latin America
Employment Type: Full-time, Long-term Contract
Open Positions: 2
Working Hours: Flexible, with required overlap with US Mountain Time

About the Role

Tight Line is looking for two experienced Senior PHP / Laravel Engineers to join our client, a US-based technology company helping broadcasters and media organizations grow their audiences and generate revenue through digital engagement solutions.

With over 15 years in business, our client is modernizing its technology platform and expanding into new markets, including digital creators and influencers.

We're looking for engineers who bring more than strong coding skills. You'll join a small engineering team where you're expected to take ownership of significant technical initiatives, drive architectural improvements, and help establish the engineering practices that will support the company's next stage of growth.

The ideal candidate has worked in established engineering environments, has firsthand experience implementing modern development and deployment practices, and knows how to translate that experience into practical improvements.

This is a hands-on engineering role with significant technical influence. You'll have the autonomy to challenge existing approaches, champion better solutions, and help shape the technical direction of the platform.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the design, development, and delivery of robust, scalable backend applications using modern PHP and Laravel.

• Lead the modernization of the existing platform, driving legacy application migration, code refactoring, and architectural improvements to support future growth.

• Drive architectural decisions and technical direction, designing solutions that improve application scalability, maintainability, performance, and reliability.

• Lead improvements to cloud infrastructure and deployment architecture, leveraging AWS and serverless technologies to build efficient, reliable production systems.

• Design and implement robust CI/CD pipelines, automated testing strategies, and deployment workflows that improve development velocity and software quality.

• Own initiatives to strengthen application observability, introducing effective monitoring, logging, error tracking, and performance diagnostics.

• Establish and champion engineering best practices, setting high standards for code quality, testing, system design, and operational excellence.

• Drive technical initiatives from concept through production, taking accountability for implementation quality, delivery, and long-term maintainability.

• Elevate the engineering capabilities of the team through technical mentorship, constructive code reviews, and sharing proven approaches from previous engineering environments.

• Identify technical bottlenecks and proactively implement improvements to architecture, infrastructure, and development processes.

• Collaborate directly with engineering leadership to evaluate technical trade-offs, define priorities, and execute initiatives that strengthen the platform and engineering organization.

What We're Looking For

• Strong professional experience in backend software development using PHP and Laravel, including ownership of production applications.

• Demonstrated ability to lead technical initiatives, make sound architectural decisions, and deliver solutions independently.

• Experience working in multiple established engineering environments with mature development practices.

• Strong understanding of software architecture, object-oriented programming, design patterns, clean code, and scalable system design.

• Hands-on experience with at least one major cloud platform: AWS, Azure, or GCP.

• Proven experience designing, implementing, or significantly improving CI/CD pipelines and automated deployment processes.

• Strong understanding of automated testing strategies, application reliability, and production troubleshooting.

• Experience improving engineering standards, development workflows, or technical practices within a team.

• Proficiency with Git and modern collaborative development workflows.

• Ability to take ownership of complex technical challenges, evaluate trade-offs, and deliver maintainable solutions.

• Strong communication skills and confidence discussing technical decisions, challenging assumptions, and sharing knowledge with other engineers.

• Good spoken and written English.

• Availability to overlap with the US-based engineering team between approximately 9 AM and 12 PM Mountain Time.

Nice to Have

• Experience with PHP 8.x and recent Laravel versions.

• Experience leading migrations or modernization of legacy PHP applications.

• Hands-on experience with AWS Lambda, serverless architectures, or Laravel applications deployed in serverless environments.

• Experience with infrastructure as code, containerization, and cloud deployment automation.

• Experience introducing or improving observability, monitoring, and application performance practices.

• Experience mentoring engineers or acting as a technical lead within a development team.

• Background building and scaling SaaS products or high-traffic web applications.

• Experience strengthening engineering processes and technical standards in smaller teams.

What We Offer

• A long-term opportunity with an established US-based technology company.

• Fully remote work from Latin America.

• Competitive compensation based on experience and technical expertise.

• The opportunity to influence engineering decisions and contribute to platform modernization.

• A small, collaborative team where individual contributions have a meaningful impact.

• Exposure to modern cloud infrastructure, serverless applications, and evolving engineering practices.

• A supportive environment that values engineering quality, professional growth, and long-term collaboration.

Interview Process

1. Initial Recruiter Screening – An introductory conversation about your background, experience, and expectations.

2. Technical Evaluation with Tight Line – Assessment of PHP engineering skills, technical fundamentals, and relevant cloud experience.

3. Hiring Manager Interview – A 45-minute discussion covering your experience, approach to engineering, and role expectations.

4. Technical Interview with the client – A 60-minute interview combining a live coding exercise (without AI assistance) and a discussion of software architecture and engineering practices.

5. Team Introduction – An opportunity to meet the engineering team, discuss collaboration, and ask questions.

Join Us

If you're a strong PHP engineer who enjoys solving complex problems, improving existing systems, and bringing new ideas to the table, we'd love to hear from you.

This is an opportunity to do more than develop features. You'll help shape the technical direction of a growing platform and contribute to building a stronger engineering organization.