A leading UK-based financial services company in the medical and dentistry sectors is hiring a Lead—Senior PHP Software Engineer to join their core Automatic Lending Platform (ALP) team.
The platform powers automated lending, loan management, payment processing, and integrations with credit bureaus, lenders, and payment providers. This is a full-stack role with a strong focus on backend PHP development, working on a mature, mission-critical financial system.
The engineering team follows an AI-forward approach, actively using tools like GitHub Copilot, Claude, and Cursor to accelerate development, while maintaining high standards for security, correctness, and code quality.
Responsibilities * Develop and maintain features across automated decisioning, loan management, and payment processing * Build integrations with credit reference agencies (TransUnion, Equifax), lenders, and payment gateways * Implement automated workflows using event-driven architecture and decision engines * Work with multi-tenant systems, ensuring data isolation and security * Optimize database queries and caching for performance and scalability * Contribute to REST API development for internal and external integrations * Write and maintain unit and functional tests (Codeception) * Participate in AI-assisted code reviews * Debug production issues involving financial transactions and third-party integrations
Required Skills & Experience * 3+ years of PHP experience (PHP 8.1+) * Strong hands-on experience with Yii2 (ActiveRecord, components, modules, behaviors) * Solid understanding of MVC, OOP, modern PHP features * Strong MySQL skills (complex queries, transactions, indexing, migrations) * Experience building RESTful APIs and authentication systems (OAuth, API keys, sessions) * Experience with background job processing / queues * Understanding of caching strategies (Redis) * Frontend basics: CSS (Flexbox, Grid), responsive design * Experience with Git, Docker, and software testing practices * Ability to work with large, legacy codebases * Strong debugging skills and critical thinking, especially when reviewing AI-generated code
Nice to Have * Experience in fintech, lending, or financial services * Knowledge of Vue.js 3 * Experience with event-driven architectures, rule engines, or workflow systems * Experience with payment processing, open banking, or credit bureaus * Experience using AI coding tools (Copilot, Claude, Cursor) * Experience with CI/CD pipelines, TypeScript, or other PHP frameworks (Laravel, Symfony)
