Engineering Manager (PHP/Laravel)

Engineering Manager – Backend (PHP/Laravel)
About the Role
We are looking for an experienced Engineering Manager – Backend to lead our backend engineering team and take ownership of the delivery, quality, scalability, performance, and reliability of our web-based telecommunications testing platform.

Our platform enables customers to test and validate telecommunications services, including IVR (Interactive Voice Response) and related telecom workflows, across different networks and environments. This is a hands-on engineering leadership role. The successful candidate will combine strong PHP/Laravel backend expertise with engineering management, system-design, troubleshooting, delivery management, and people-leadership skills.

You will work closely with frontend engineering, QA, Product, DevOps/Platform, and other stakeholders to build and operate reliable, secure, and scalable systems.

Key Responsibilities
Engineering & Architecture
● Own the technical direction and day-to-day execution of backend engineering.
● Design, review, and evolve scalable backend architecture using PHP and Laravel.
● Own backend APIs, databases, integrations, background processing, and related services.
● Make sound architectural decisions considering scalability, maintainability, performance, reliability, and security.
● Review technical designs and provide guidance for complex implementations.
● Identify and address architectural weaknesses and technical debt.
● Ensure appropriate logging, monitoring, exception handling, and observability are incorporated into backend services.
● Drive continuous improvement and modernization of existing systems.

Delivery & Execution
● Lead planning and execution of backend engineering work.
● Break business and product requirements into appropriate technical solutions and implementation plans.
● Provide and review engineering estimates and ensure commitments are realistic.
● Coordinate priorities and workload across backend engineers.
● Track delivery risks, dependencies, and technical blockers and address them proactively.
● Ensure backend deliverables are completed with appropriate quality and testing.
● Work with Product and other stakeholders to communicate technical trade offs, dependencies, risks, and timelines.

Code Quality & Engineering Excellence
● Establish and maintain backend engineering standards and best practices.
● Drive effective code reviews and maintain high standards for production code.
● Promote clean architecture, reusable components, maintainable code, and appropriate design patterns.
● Ensure effective automated testing and continuously improve backend test coverage.
● Lead refactoring initiatives and manage technical debt systematically.
● Improve API performance and application/database efficiency.
● Investigate production issues and ensure appropriate root-cause analysis and preventive actions.

Reliability, Performance & Security
● Ensure backend systems remain reliable and performant as usage grows.
● Monitor and improve API response times and backend service performance.
● Design systems with appropriate availability, resilience, failure handling, and recovery mechanisms.
● Work with DevOps/Platform teams on CI/CD, deployments, monitoring, infrastructure, and production reliability.
● Ensure backend development follows secure coding and data-protection practices.
● Participate in incident investigation and improvements following production issues.

Telecommunications Domain
● Develop a strong understanding of telecommunications testing workflows and customer requirements.
● Work with systems that interact with telecommunications services such as IVR, voice/call flows, SMS and related communication workflows, where applicable.
● Help engineering teams diagnose issues spanning web applications, APIs, integrations, telecom workflows, and external systems.
● Previous telecommunications experience is desirable but strong candidates from other complex SaaS/platform environments are also encouraged to apply.

Team Leadership & Development
● Lead, mentor, and develop backend engineers.
● Conduct regular technical and performance discussions with team members.
● Help engineers grow in architecture, coding, debugging, ownership, and decision- making.
● Support onboarding and development of new engineers.
● Build a culture of accountability, collaboration, continuous learning, and engineering excellence.
● Identify skill gaps and contribute to hiring and team-development plans.
● Participate in technical interviews and hiring decisions for backend engineering roles.

Required Skills & Experience
● Strong professional software engineering experience, including significant experience building backend web applications.
● Strong hands-on experience with PHP and Laravel.
● Experience leading or managing backend software engineering teams.
● Strong understanding of REST APIs and API design.
● Strong knowledge of relational databases such as MySQL/MariaDB, including schema design, indexing, query optimization, and performance troubleshooting.
● Experience designing scalable, reliable web-based/SaaS applications.
● Strong knowledge of software architecture, design patterns, and clean-code principles.
● Experience with automated testing and backend testing strategies.
● Experience with Git-based development and code-review workflows.
● Understanding of CI/CD and modern software deployment practices.
● Experience diagnosing complex production and performance issues.
● Understanding of application security and secure software-development practices.
● Strong problem-solving and debugging abilities.
● Strong communication and stakeholder-management skills.
● Ability to balance hands-on technical leadership with people and delivery management.

Preferred Qualifications
Experience in one or more of the following would be advantageous:
● Telecommunications or telecom testing platforms.
● IVR, telephony, voice, SMS, or communication platforms.
● High-volume API or transaction-processing systems.
● Redis, queues, caching, scheduled/background jobs, and asynchronous processing.
● Docker/containerized applications.
● Cloud infrastructure.
● Application and infrastructure monitoring/observability.
● CI/CD and deployment automation.
● Performance tuning and load testing.
● Working with distributed or geographically dispersed engineering teams.