Sr. Software Engineer (PHP)

Job Description

Higher Logic Vanilla is looking for a Senior Software Developer (Backend / PHP) who thrives at the intersection of product engineering, scalability, and modern developer workflows—including AI-assisted development. You'll help build and evolve the core application systems that power rich community experiences for millions of users worldwide. This role is primarily focused on backend and platform development, but success in this position requires strong product thinking, sound engineering judgment, and the ability to work effectively in a large, mature application with complex integrations, extensibility points, and performance considerations.

What You'll Do

• Build, maintain, and ship high-quality product features in a multidisciplinary Agile team.
• Design and evolve backend systems that support large-scale, highly configurable community applications.
• Work across core application layers, APIs, integrations, and platform capabilities to deliver reliable end-to-end solutions.
• Write reliable, well-tested code; participate in code review; mentor teammates through thoughtful feedback and shared patterns.
• Triage, debug, and resolve production issues efficiently; collaborate closely with product, QA, support, and other engineers to close the loop quickly.
• Contribute to application performance, scalability, resilience, and maintainability across a large and evolving codebase.
• Help shape technical direction by improving architecture, coding standards, tooling, documentation, and team development practices.
• Participate in guild or cross-team engineering discussions to strengthen backend practices and promote sustainable patterns across the organization.
• AI-Forward Development Responsibilities
• Use AI-powered IDEs and assistants (e.g., Cursor, Copilot-style tools) to accelerate implementation, refactoring, debugging, and test generation—while ensuring correctness, security, and maintainability.
• Apply AI thoughtfully: write strong prompts, verify outputs, and incorporate guardrails such as automated tests, static analysis, code review, and runtime validation.
• Partner on AI-enabled product and platform initiatives where relevant, including areas like moderation tooling, content workflows, search and discovery, summarization, admin productivity, and internal developer efficiency.

What We're Looking For (Required)

• Strong understanding of Agile values and principles.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including object-oriented design, modular architecture, and maintainable coding practices.
• Experience building and supporting production applications at scale, with attention to performance, reliability, and long-term maintainability.
• Experience designing and working with APIs and service boundaries in complex systems.
• Ability to debug effectively, reason through production issues, and make sound tradeoffs in a large application environment.
• Awareness of security best practices and experience identifying or addressing vulnerabilities in web applications.
• Comfort working in containerized or modern local development environments and with contemporary engineering workflows.
• Comfort with Git-based workflows, pull requests, and collaborative code review.
• Practical experience using AI coding tools (Cursor or equivalent) in day-to-day development, including validating generated code and avoiding insecure or low-quality patterns.

Desired Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software development experience building and maintaining production web applications.
• Experience working in a large, mature application or platform with significant business logic, legacy considerations, and evolving architecture.
• Experience with extensible or modular systems such as themes, plugins, integrations, or configurable platform features.
• Experience working with asynchronous processing, background jobs, queues, or event-driven patterns.
• Familiarity with database-backed applications and the performance considerations that come with them.
• Experience with testing practices and tools that build confidence through automation.
• Strong product instincts: you communicate tradeoffs well, care about user outcomes, and understand how technical decisions affect the customer experience.
• Experience contributing to technical mentoring, architectural improvements, or shared engineering standards.

What You'll Earn

Competitive compensation.
Comprehensive health benefits package.
401(k) plan with employer match.
Healthcare and dependent-care flexible spending account.
Company short-term and long-term disability insurance.
Company culture that recognizes its employees.
Room for growth and development and management that cares about your professional growth and will help you achieve your goals.
Significant advancement opportunities for outstanding performers.

EEO Disclosure

Higher Logic is committed to equal opportunity. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Higher Logic is committed to ensuring that its application process provides an equal employment opportunity to all job seekers, including individuals with disabilities.