Senior Backend Developer (PHP)

Senior Backend Developer (PHP) at Playkot, remote worldwide. Work on SuperCity live-service game backend with PHP, MongoDB, Redis, AWS; high-load production, architecture, performance.

Playkot has been creating games known and loved by millions of players worldwide for 17 years: Age of Magic, SuperCity, and Spring Valley. The role is in the SuperCity team — a city-builder that has been evolving for over 15 years and has attracted tens of millions of players. This is not a project from scratch, but a large live product where reliability, performance, and quality of backend solutions directly affect players. Responsibilities: - Develop and maintain the SuperCity server side in PHP. - Work with a high-load production backend of a large live-service game. - Develop existing services and implement new game functionality. - Optimize performance and data handling. - Understand the existing architecture and find solutions that help the product evolve. - Participate in technical discussions and make architectural decisions. - Work with other developers and product specialists on new features and game improvements.

- 5+ years of commercial backend development experience in PHP. - Experience in GameDev or with other high-load backend systems. - Practical experience with MongoDB and Redis. - Experience with AWS. - Ability to understand existing code and architecture of a large production product. - Understanding of reliable and scalable backend development principles. - Independence in technical decisions and responsibility for results. Ideal candidate: - Thinks about how a technical solution affects the product and players, not just writes code. - Can work with a large existing system and improve it gradually without breaking what already works. - Looks for root causes and proposes solutions instead of waiting for detailed specifications for every step. - Works calmly with legacy where justified and understands when the system truly needs to change. - Is ready to discuss solutions, share expertise, and take ownership of their part of the product.

- Work on SuperCity — a large live-service product with a long history and millions of players. - Competitive salary with review every six months, considering contribution and market conditions. - Flexible Lego benefits: 1000 USD per year to distribute between medical insurance, sport, psychotherapy, etc. - 20 working days of paid vacation. - 100% salary retention during sick leave and vacations. - Radical transparency: open internal statistics, including revenue metrics for games. - Strong team that shares knowledge, supports each other, and develops the product together. - Format: Remote.