PHP Software Engineer

About the role

Smartbox Group is seeking a PHP Software Engineer to join its Dublin IT team. The position focuses on designing, building and maintaining scalable backend services and APIs, while actively leveraging AI tools to improve productivity, code quality and delivery speed.

Key responsibilities

• Design, build and maintain scalable backend services and RESTful APIs.
• Write clean, maintainable and well‑tested code using modern PHP (7/8) and Symfony.
• Contribute to system design, distributed architecture and technical documentation.
• Monitor production systems for performance and reliability, and resolve bugs and incidents.
• Participate in code reviews and uphold high engineering standards.
• Prepare and release application versions through CI/CD pipelines.
• Address technical debt and continuously improve the platform.
• Actively use AI tools (e.g., Claude, Copilot) for coding, debugging, testing and documentation.
• Validate AI‑generated outputs for correctness, security and maintainability.
• Identify opportunities to automate repetitive tasks with AI.

Required profile

• Minimum 4 years of professional backend development experience.
• Strong problem‑solving abilities and collaborative mindset.
• Willingness to adopt AI‑enhanced development workflows.

Required skills

• PHP (versions 7 and 8).
• Symfony framework.
• RESTful API design.
• Object‑oriented programming.
• Relational databases such as MySQL.
• Git version control.
• CI/CD pipelines.
• Docker containerisation.
• PHPUnit automated testing.
• AI coding assistants (Claude, Copilot).