Senior Backend Engineer (PHP)

Prezly is a remote-first SaaS company building the platform that 500+ communication teams use to tell their stories to the world. Our product powers stories and campaigns viewed by millions of readers - and behind that is a backend platform that has to be fast, reliable, and constantly evolving.

We’re looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to help us take that platform to the next level.

You will own meaningful parts of a production system, work closely with product and design, and ship improvements that directly impact how our customers experience Prezly.

What you’ll do

You’ll work on the core of the Prezly platform - the systems that store, process, and deliver stories, media, and communication workflows.

That includes:

• Designing, building, and maintaining backend services in PHP (Symfony) and PostgreSQL
• Owning parts of our data model, APIs, and internal services
• Improving performance, reliability, and developer experience across the stack
• Shipping continuously through our CI/CD pipeline - when it’s ready, it goes live
• Working closely with product, marketing and design to turn real customer problems into shipped features
• Refactoring and modernizing parts of a large, long-lived codebase

We value progress over perfection - you’ll be expected to ship, learn, and iterate fast rather than wait for everything to be perfect.

What we’re looking for

You should bring most of the following:

• Solid experience building and owning production backend systems in PHP, ideally with Symfony
• Comfort working in a large, existing codebase and improving it over time
• Strong understanding of databases, data modeling, and APIs
• A mindset of ownership - you don’t just close tickets, you improve the system
• The ability to make technical tradeoffs and explain them clearly
• Near-native English (both written and spoken) and confidence working in a fully remote team

Experience with React, TypeScript and cloud infra providers (like AWS) is a strong plus. We’re also strong believers in using AI-powered coding tools like Claude Code and Cursor - let us know if they’re a part of your dev environment.

Our tech stack

Prezly runs a large-scale PHP platform used by millions of people every day.

On the backend we use:

• PHP with a Symfony-based framework (our own fork) and Propel
• PostgreSQL
• A containerized infrastructure running on Kubernetes (hosted on AWS)
• CI/CD pipelines that build, test, and deploy on every push

Some parts of the stack are battle-tested and mature; others are actively evolving. You’ll help shape how it grows from here.

How we work

We’re a remote-first, high-ownership team.

That means:

• We focus on results and impact
• We expect people to take initiative and raise the standard
• We ship early, learn from real usage, and iterate
• We care deeply about our customers and their success

We collaborate closely in real time, which is why we hire within ±2 hours of Central European Time.

What we offer

• Competitive salary
• Home office budget to set up a workspace that works for you
• Your choice of equipment
• Flexible working hours
• 35 paid days off
• Team gatherings at our head office in Belgium, and across Europe to connect, collaborate, and have fun together.
• A high-trust, high-impact environment where your work truly matters

If you want to own part of a real product, work with people who care, and make something used around the world better every day - we’d love to hear from you.