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

1. Take-home technical exercise + small code submission

2. 90-minute technical deep-dive with a senior engineer

3. ~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