Middle/Senior Full-Stack (PHP/React) Software Engineer (Contractor)

We are looking for an experienced Middle+/Senior PHP Software Engineers with strong full-stack capabilities (React) to join a product engineering team building and scaling a high-performance payments ecosystem platform.

Our client is a US-based company, with 20+ years on a market. The client is launching a new product as an extension of an established enterprise payments ecosystem used by partners and merchants across multiple industries. The goal of the project is to build a modern, unified partner/merchant portal and platform that consolidates the currently fragmented experience across multiple NMI sites, including both the CRM-facing environment and the payment gateway/processing environment.

Today, customers often need to log in to different systems depending on the features they use, which creates a disjointed user experience, and this initiative is intended to “marry” those capabilities into one seamless platform.

The solution is expected to be API-first and integration-friendly, designed for enterprise-grade reliability, security, and performance. It will likely include modules such as partner and merchant onboarding, configuration and administration portals, payment orchestration and integrations, and analytics/reporting. The platform should be scalable and modular, allowing it to evolve over time and be broadly adopted across the wider ecosystem.

Required skills

• Experience: Minimum 3+ years (Middle) or 5+ years (Senior) of experience developing complex software applications in an agile environment
• PHP expertise: Advanced proficiency in PHP, with strong understanding of object-oriented design principles and modern PHP patterns
• Laravel proficiency: Extensive experience with Laravel framework; familiarity with other frameworks (e.g., Symfony) is a plus
• Frontend skills: Comfortable building rich web experiences using React; Experience working with Inertia.js for building modern SPA-like applications
• GraphQL & APIs: Hands-on experience designing and consuming GraphQL APIs; strong background with REST/Web APIs; Experience working with Apollo Client (or similar GraphQL clients); Experience with Rebing GraphQL framework.
• Microservices & SaaS: Experience working in microservice architectures and multi-tenant SaaS systems in production.
• Database: Strong SQL skills (especially MySQL), performance tuning, indexing, schema design.
• Code quality & engineering practices: Experience with static code analysis and code quality tools such as PHPStan and SonarQube; Strong focus on maintainable, testable, and well-structured code
• Engineering maturity: Great debugging skills, strong sense of data security and privacy, and ability to deliver robust solutions under uncertainty.
• Communication & Collaboration: Experience working effectively with remote and cross-functional teams without a project manager, strong problem-solving and communication skills; Experience working with JIRA for task tracking, backlog management, and collaboration
• Hands-on experience with Agentic AI development tools (AI agents, workflow automation, semi-agentic decisions)
• English level: Upper-Intermediate

Would be a plus

• Experience with cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Familiarity with payment processing systems, PCI compliance, or fintech workflows.
• Experience contributing to system design decisions and performance optimization at scale.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, and automated testing. 
• Familiarity with monitoring and logging tools (e.g., Datadog, New Relic, Logz.io).