Lead Developer of Internal Portal Products

We are developing a line of internal corporate portals:

- Infrastructure & Operations Portal — managing the company's infrastructure (VMs, servers, VPNs, access, secrets) and communications/HR (documentation, news, feedback, reporting). Approximately 20 modules in one product, and growing.
- Service Management Portal — an external product for a large corporate client in the ITSM domain: formalized interaction between operations (Ops/SRE), development, support, and management. Role-based interfaces on top of standard ITSM entities (services, incidents, changes, releases, transitions, risks).

We are looking for a lead developer who will take on the entire product portfolio: designing the architecture of new modules, writing code, and being responsible for stability, security, and performance. The team is small, with little bureaucracy—this is a role with real responsibility and broad autonomy, not just a "ticket handler."

Process highlight: A significant portion of the code is written using Claude (Claude Code / API). The candidate leads development with an AI agent as the primary executor: formulates tasks, reviews results, maintains the architecture and product vision.
 

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What you'll be doing
- Design and implement new modules (backend + frontend + database migrations + cron jobs + integrations).
- Maintain and develop existing modules: refactoring, eliminating technical debt, optimizing queries and the frontend.
- Integrate with external systems via SSH/HTTP/API (control panels, billing, messengers, helpdesk, hypervisors; for the ITSM portal — monitoring, CI/CD, ticketing/CRM).
- Work with security: SSH keys, secret encryption, RBAC, audit logs.
- Maintain development infrastructure: Docker environment, migrations, deployment, monitoring.
- Conduct development using Claude Code: decompose tasks into specifications understandable to both humans and LLM students; conduct code reviews of everything generated by the AI; identify "it works, but it's not working"; roll back unsuccessful iterations.
- Review, mentor, and document architectural decisions.
 

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Technology Stack
Backend — PHP 8.x (no heavy frameworks — pure PHP + custom router and DB layer)
Database — MySQL / MariaDB, PHP migrations
Frontend — Alpine.js 3, Tailwind CSS (no bundlers or Node pipeline)
Realtime — Server-Sent Events, BroadcastChannel
Infrastructure — Docker / docker-compose, Linux (Debian/Ubuntu), cron, systemd, SSH
Cryptography — OpenSSL (AES-256-GCM), libsodium (Ed25519), DEK/KEK
External Systems — libvirt, OpenStack, OpenVPN, Rocket.Chat, Redmine, monitoring, CI/CD tools, ticketing
AI Tools — Claude Code / Claude API as the main code execution engine
Highlights — Ability to work without framework "magic." The project doesn't use Laravel/Symfony/Vue/React—everything is based on explicit calls, closer to the roots of PHP and JS. This, incidentally, makes the codebase AI-friendly: fewer hidden conventions, more explicit code that Claude reads and writes well.
 

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Requirements

Required
- 5+ years of commercial PHP development, project management experience (not only coding but also making architectural decisions).
- Practical experience with AI agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot Workspace, Aider, and similar)—not just "testing" them, but managing real projects using them for at least 6 months. Understanding how to write LLM requirements specifications and how to review AI-generated code, where AI most often makes mistakes.
- Confident SQL (MySQL/MariaDB): schema, indexes, query optimization, migrations, transactions, locks.
- Experience working without frameworks or with minimal ones (Slim, Yii-style, custom routers) – must be comfortable with the entire stack, from routing to templates.
- Frontend: confident vanilla JS + experience with Alpine.js, Vue.js, or Knockout.js (any reactive JS without a bundler).
- Tailwind CSS or another utility-first CSS framework.
- Linux at a power user level: bash, SSH, cron, systemd, permissions, sudoers, reading logs.
- Docker and docker-compose: building images, debugging containers, multi-service compose.
- Applied cryptography: AES-GCM, asymmetric keys, secure secret storage, SSH key generation and verification.
- Web application security: OWASP Top 10, protection against SQLi/XSS/CSRF, secure work with files and shell commands.
- Git: strong workflow, code review, conflict resolution.
- Systems thinking: ability to decompose a subject area into entities, states, and transitions; write specifications with clear scope boundaries.

A plus:
- Experience administering Linux servers (not only development but also operation).
- Virtualization: libvirt/KVM, Proxmox, OpenStack, VMware.
- Networking technologies: OpenVPN, WireGuard, routing, iptables/nftables.
- Experience building RBAC and multi-tenant systems.
- Experience with hosting control panels (ISPmanager, cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin).
- SSE/WebSockets, multi-node architectures with distributed locks.
- ITIL/ITSM/SRE practices: incident management, change management (Standard/Normal/Emergency), release management, service transition, SLA/SLO, runbooks, observability contracts.
- Experience working within an Operations/DevOps/SRE team (having seen the process from the inside).
- Experience developing internal portals, status pages, change/release queues, and incident dashboards.
- Code review and mentoring.
 

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What we especially value
- Common sense is more important than beautiful code. Solutions should be simple, maintainable, and adequate to the task. Avoid overcomplicating things.
- Independence. Ability to take a task from "here's an idea in one sentence" to a working feature in production.
- A clear business case. Understand why a feature is being developed and what pain points it alleviates.
- Accuracy with production data. These are internal tools—all employees and infrastructure depend on their work.
- Willingness to write documentation and leave behind understandable code for the next developer (or for the next AI iteration).
- A healthy attitude toward AI. Not "AI will do everything itself," but also not "AI is a toy." The ability to use it as a tool for improvement, understanding its strengths and weaknesses.