Senior PHP Engineer (Symfony) — U.S. Remote (ET Preferred)
About the Company
Our client isn’t just a 3PL*—they’re a growth partner for ecommerce and DTC brands. Their AI-powered platform and network of owned & operated fulfillment centers help 1,500+ merchants stress less and grow more. With 2,500+ team members across five countries, they’re building the fastest click-to-delivery and real-time inventory visibility with a merchant-first mindset.
*Quick note: 3PL = Third-Party Logistics—they store inventory, pick/pack, and ship orders for ecommerce brands, powered by their own WMS and apps.
Why Join
Global, owned network: 12+ fulfillment centers across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, U.K., and EU (no outsourcing).
Proprietary tech: AI-powered, real-time view of inventory & orders; robust internal platform used by associates, robots, pack stations, and conveyors.
Hands-on support: On-site teams at every facility; “mom-and-pop” care at global scale.
Transparent pricing: Predictable, all-in pricing; long-term partnerships.
Here for the long haul: $10M+ annual R&D investment; they open-source selectively and contribute back.
Core Values
Merchant-First • Own It • People Make the Company • Change the Score • Get Sh*t Done
The Role
You’ll join the Product Development team to build and scale the backend that powers fulfillment—everything from order ingestion and wave planning to pick/pack/ship workflows, device clients, and integrations with autonomous robots and conveyors. You’ll work U.S. hours (ET preferred) and partner closely with a seasoned global engineering org.
Reporting to: Director of Engineering (Europe)
Location: U.S. Remote (East Coast strongly preferred)
Compensation target: $110k–$130k base DOE (plus standard benefits)
Tech Stack
Core: PHP 8.3, Symfony 6, Doctrine ORM, MySQL 8, RabbitMQ, GraphQL, Elasticsearch
Infra: Docker, Kubernetes (AWS), Argo CD, GitLab CI
Quality/Obs: PHPStan, PHP_CodeSniffer, PHPUnit, custom phpstan rules & sniffs, >15k DB integration tests, E2E Cypress
Ops: DataDog, Sentry, Opsgenie; HA/failover/autoscaling
What You’ll Do
Design and implement high-throughput Symfony services and REST-like APIs used by web clients, iOS picker devices, micro-computer packers, and automation equipment.
Tackle concurrency and race conditions common in warehouse environments; write resilient code that behaves under load.
Optimize MySQL at terabyte scale (indexes, query plans, partitions) and tune RabbitMQ consumers for throughput and reliability.
Contribute to the monorepo (shared libs, CI checks, codegen, docs) and improve developer ergonomics.
Write reliable tests (PHPUnit + DB integration datasets) and participate in two-round reviews with QA/E2E verification.
Partner with TPMs and operations to turn floor feedback into shippable software—deployed multiple times per day with one-click Argo CD.
Help retire legacy, reduce tech debt, and raise bar on code health (static analysis, coverage, custom rules).
Nice to Have
Deep Symfony internals; custom bundles/components
GraphQL schema design at scale; Elasticsearch relevance tuning
Event-driven design; idempotency patterns; exactly-once/at-least-once semantics
SRE/operability instincts (dashboards, SLOs, on-call rotation with Opsgenie)
Experience in WMS/3PL, ecommerce, or high-volume transactional systems
How They Work (and what they’re proud of)
Fully dockerized local dev; single-click, per-MR ephemeral clusters for CI testing.
Automated API docs for REST-like endpoints.
Renovate-bot and comprehensive security scans.
Open-source select tools and contribute back to the community.
Impact in Your First 90 Days
30 days: ship a meaningful feature/bugfix to production; add/extend tests; land a small performance win.
60 days: own a service area; drive a schema/index change with measurable latency or throughput improvements.
90 days: lead a cross-component change (e.g., queue topology + consumer tuning) that improves SLAs during peak.
Interview Process
Take-home technical exercise + small code submission
90-minute technical deep-dive with a senior engineer
~3-hour panel with the broader team
They move quickly. Note: they actively assess for authentic, original work (they can detect AI-generated submissions).
Must-Have Qualifications
5–10+ years building production PHP systems (3+ with Symfony preferred; strong Laravel ok if willing to switch)
Advanced SQL/MySQL skills (indexes, query plans, locking, transaction boundaries)
Experience with queues (RabbitMQ, Kafka, etc.) and distributed systems trade-offs
Proficiency with Docker, CI, code quality tooling, and rigorous automated testing
Clear communication, ownership, and a bias to ship—U.S. business hours
Nice-to-Have Qualifications
Kubernetes on AWS; Argo CD; GitLab CI pipelines
GraphQL APIs at scale; Elasticsearch optimization
Warehouse/IoT device clients, automation, or robotics integrations
Observability (DataDog/Sentry), incident response, on-call participation
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