Senior Backend Developer (PHP)

SuperCity is a cross-platform city-builder with over 30 million players and a 14+ year history, running on 8 platforms.

Every server error can cost our players their time — and us real revenue. That’s why we place a strong emphasis on stability, performance, and reliability.

To help us evolve our backend, maintain a high-load production system, and deliver new engaging features and game mechanics, the SuperCity team is looking for a Senior Backend Developer (PHP).

Backend Development

• Develop and maintain backend services using PHP.
• Work with a high-load production system (~100k DAU).
• Extend and support a monolithic backend architecture, improving stability and scalability.

Architecture & APIs

• Design, implement, and maintain APIs and internal service interactions.
• Work with API contracts based on JSON Schema.
• Use jRPC for internal communication between system components.

Infrastructure & Data

• Work with MongoDB, Redis, AWS, and Centrifugo.
• Optimize data storage, caching strategies, and background processes.
• Ensure system reliability under real production load.

Performance & Monitoring

• Analyze system performance using Grafana and other monitoring tools.
• Identify bottlenecks, degradation points, and inefficiencies.
• Optimize queries, caching layers, and heavy backend flows.

Required Qualifications

• Strong commercial experience with PHP backend development (5+ years).
• Experience in GameDev or other high-load backend systems.
• Solid understanding of OOP and software design principles.
• Hands-on experience with MongoDB and Redis.
• Experience working with AWS.
• Ability to analyze metrics and work with monitoring tools such as Grafana.
• Understanding of API contracts and JSON Schema.
• Experience with jRPC or similar RPC/API approaches.
• Strong understanding of high-load system challenges, including:
  • Caching strategies
  • Concurrency and race conditions
  • Fault tolerance
  • Scalability
  • Bottleneck identification
• Comfortable working with monolithic architectures and evolving them without disruptive rewrites.

Nice to Have

• Experience with real-time systems like Centrifugo.
• Experience supporting live game servers, live-ops, and event-driven logic.
• Experience profiling and optimizing PHP applications.
• Understanding of CI/CD, observability, and production workflows.
• Experience with evolutionary development of legacy systems.

What we offer:

• Work in a stable international company.
• Competitive salary, reviewed every 6 months based on market trends and your performance.
• Flexible work setup: whether you prefer coming to the office, working from home, or a hybrid of the two, the choice is yours.
• Flexible benefits: an annual $1000 to spend on perks, including health insurance, sports, therapy, education and language classes.
• Full pay during sick leaves and personal leaves, in addition to 20 working days of vacation annually.
• Open statistics, including earnings from our games.
• An epic team ready to share their experience and knowledge.