Lead Backend Engineer – Laravel (Hybrid, London)

About the role

We are looking for a Lead Backend Engineer to take full ownership of a live, multi-tenant Laravel platform serving the UK energy sector. You will shape the architecture, drive technical standards and guide the evolution of a complex calculation engine within a small, high-impact team.

Key responsibilities

• Design, develop and maintain a Laravel micro-services platform supporting multi-tenant data isolation.
• Extend and optimise a scientific calculation engine with strict accuracy requirements.
• Implement and manage event-driven workflows using queues, Redis pub/sub and asynchronous pipelines.
• Build and sustain integrations with external APIs and data sources.
• Ensure backend security, including OAuth 2.1 and identity management.
• Collaborate with DevOps to operate the stack on AWS (EC2, RDS, S3) using Docker, CI/CD pipelines and Laravel Forge/Vapor.

Required profile

• 5+ years of professional experience building complex backend or SaaS systems with Laravel.
• Proven ability to work in a small team and take ownership of architecture and delivery.
• Strong analytical mindset for handling domain-heavy calculations and data isolation.
• Willingness to work hybrid – one day a week in the London office, with flexibility.

Required skills

• Laravel (PHP)
• Micro-services and multi-tenant architecture
• OAuth 2.1 and backend security
• AWS (EC2, RDS, S3)
• Docker
• CI/CD pipelines
• Laravel Forge or Vapor
• Redis (queues, pub/sub)
• Elasticsearch
• Event-driven design and async pipelines

What we offer

• Competitive salary £80,000‑£90,000 per year.
• Clear progression route towards senior technical leadership.
• Equity participation aligned with impact.
• Hybrid working model with flexibility.