Senior/ Lead PHP Engineer (with AI Skills)

About the Position

We're looking for a Senior/Lead PHP Engineer with AI Skills to join our top European automotive marketplace team. You'll be responsible for designing, building, and maintaining robust backend services and APIs using PHP and Laravel, and integrating agentic AI workflows into our products and internal tooling.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain robust backend services and APIs using PHP and Laravel
• Own features from technical design through deployment and monitoring
• Integrate and orchestrate agentic AI workflows (e.g., LLM-based agents, tool-calling pipelines, autonomous task runners) into existing products or internal tooling
• Improve system performance, reliability, and security across the stack
• Stay current with the PHP/Laravel ecosystem and emerging agentic AI tools and patterns

Requirements

• 6+ years of professional PHP development experience
• 4+ years building applications with Laravel (or comparable modern PHP framework experience with strong Laravel proficiency)
• Solid database skills (MySQL/PostgreSQL), including query optimization and schema design
• Familiarity with containerization (Docker) and cloud deployment (AWS, GCP, or similar)
• Strong communication skills and the judgment to work independently on ambiguous problems
• Hands-on GenAI experience - you've built with LLM APIs, tool/function calling, retrieval, agents, or agent frameworks and put them into real workflows.
• Modern AI coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, Codex) are part of how you work day to day.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills - you work well in a team, share your opinions clearly, and can move a topic forward with people across functions.
• Solid engineering fundamentals: testing, debugging, code quality, and getting things production-ready.
• English - at least Upper Intermediate+
• Work in EDT (Toronto) time zone

We Offer

• Flexible working format - remote, office-based or flexible
• A competitive salary and good compensation package
• Personalized career growth
• Professional development tools (mentorship program, tech talks and trainings, centers of excellence, and more)
• Active tech communities with regular knowledge sharing
• Education reimbursement
• Memorable anniversary presents
• Corporate events and team buildings
• Other location-specific benefits

*not applicable for freelancers

About the Company

Our client is a leading online car marketplace group operating across Europe and North America, bringing together market-leading brands to shape the future of our industry by combining the best of both regions.