Senior Software Engineer – PHP & AI-Native Development (Full-Time, Hybrid) [AS342]

Responsibilities

• Own features end to end, from scoping ambiguous problems and directing development through deployment to iterating based on what is learned.

• Direct several AI coding agent sessions in parallel while focusing personally on design decisions, code reviews and complex technical problems.

• Take ownership of an area of the codebase and its technical direction, designing scalable and distributed systems.

• Build and improve shared AI infrastructure, including plugins, skills, review processes and continuous integration (CI) loops.

• Act as a technical voice during product discovery, collaborating with product and design teams and challenging requirements that do not support the intended outcome.

• Contribute to department-level technical initiatives, including security improvements, architectural changes and platform upgrades.

• Mentor less experienced engineers and maintain high standards of engineering quality without requiring direct line-management responsibilities.

• Work independently across multiple workstreams while collaborating closely with technical leaders, product designers and other engineers.

• Apply strong technical judgement to balance system scalability, performance and product outcomes, recognising when optimisation is necessary.

• Help establish and improve engineering review and CI standards while working effectively with ambiguous requirements and evolving priorities.

Requirements

• Minimum 5 years of commercial experience developing applications with PHP, demonstrating advanced programming skills and strong engineering fundamentals.

• Minimum 4 years of experience with Laravel, Symfony or another PHP MVC framework, with a solid understanding of MVC architecture and application development.

• Minimum 1 year of hands-on experience with AI-native development, using Claude Code or comparable agentic coding tools regularly in production environments.

• Minimum 1 year of experience applying AI-assisted development best practices, including context management, token cost optimisation and reviewing AI-generated code for quality and correctness.

• Experience building agentic solutions and shared AI development tooling, including plugins, reusable skills, automated review workflows and CI loops, ideally with at least 1 year of practical experience.

• Minimum 3 years of experience developing modern front-end applications using Vue 3, React or a comparable JavaScript framework, such as Angular.

• Minimum 3 years of experience designing and developing scalable, distributed systems, with the ability to make sound architectural decisions independently.

• Minimum 2 years of production experience with AWS or another cloud platform, including deploying and supporting cloud-based applications.

• Strong end-to-end technical ownership, with experience independently scoping complex problems, leading feature development and delivering solutions through to deployment.

• Strong product thinking and problem-solving skills, with the ability to collaborate with product and design teams, challenge requirements and make decisions aligned with business outcomes.

• Ability to manage multiple AI agent workflows and engineering workstreams simultaneously, while maintaining high standards of code quality, technical design and review.

• Experience mentoring less experienced engineers, providing technical guidance and promoting engineering best practices. Previous line-management experience is not required.

• Excellent communication, collaboration and influencing skills, with the confidence to contribute to technical decisions beyond the immediate engineering team.

• Ability to work independently in a fast-paced, AI-native engineering environment, balancing scalability, performance, delivery priorities and attention to detail.

• Must be based in the UK and willing to attend the Manchester office at least twice per month.

Nice to Have

• Working knowledge of AWS services, including ECS, Lambda, SQS, EventBridge and RDS.

• Experience contributing to security improvements, architectural changes and platform upgrades.