Senior BackEnd PHP Developer to $4500

Project Description:
Recovery for All (RFA) is a seven-year (2025–2031) technical assistance project, funded by Global Affairs Canada and implemented by Alinea International. 
 

About the Work:
Within the RFA initiative, we develop ProjectUA — a national IT platform for the Government of Ukraine that enables planning, monitoring and evaluation of policy implementation. ProjectUA consolidates government priorities, delivers real-time progress monitoring, and supports transparent, data-driven decision-making. 
 

Today the platform is used by over 900 civil servants across 50+ ministries and agencies and 25 regional administrations. ProjectUA tracks over 10,000 tasks across 20+ strategies and plans, turning dispersed operational data into actionable insights that improve coordination, accountability and the effectiveness of the government.
 

The Role:    

We are strengthening our backend team with a Senior PHP Developer who has a serious engineering attitude toward:
●    Security and compliance
●    System reliability and fault tolerance
●    Performance optimization at scale
●    Clean, auditable, maintainable backend architecture
 

A key responsibility of this role will be integration with government information systems (like Diia, id.gov.ua, Askod, etc.) using national security algorithms, standards and security requirements, including preparatory security and architectural improvements required for government identity service.

Primary tasks are: 
●    Design, develop, and maintain high-quality backend solutions in PHP;
●    Review and improve the existing codebase with focus on security vulnerabilities and performance bottlenecks.
●    Write and maintain unit and integration tests.
●    Prepare and maintain clear technical documentation.
 

Formal Eligibility Requirements (Mandatory):    

Please note: Due to project, contracting, and donor requirements, candidates must meet all of the criteria below in order to be considered:
●    Ukrainian citizenship (mandatory).
●    Registered Ukrainian Private Entrepreneur of the 3d group (consultancy services) or readiness to register as Private Entrepreneur prior to contract signing.
●    Legal ability to provide consultancy services under Ukrainian law.
●    Availability for full-time engagement (Monday–Friday).
 

Required Qualifications:    

Experience:
●    5+ years of professional PHP experience (PHP 7.x / 8.x).
●    Strong experience with Yii2 or similar framework. .
●    Solid knowledge of MySQL, including schema design and query optimization.
●    Strong background in API design and backend architecture.
●    Hands-on experience refactoring monolithic architectures, improving performance and memory usage.
●    Understanding of software design principles and clean code practices (SOLID, OOP, design patterns).
●    Experience with caching and in-memory data stores (Redis).
●    Basic understanding of frontend stack (HTML/CSS, JavaScript, Twig; Vue.js is a plus).

What We Value Most:
●    Engineering mindset focused on long-term system health, not short-term hacks.
●    Strong personal responsibility for security, reliability, and correctness.
●    Ability to work proactively and independently.

As a plus:
●    Experience with Symfony and/or Laravel.
●    Experience working on government, fintech, or other high-compliance systems.
●    Experience preparing systems for external security reviews or audits.